More expulsions leave only 37 Ill . issionary priests there HE

heroic story of the sufferings and expulsions of the missionaries in China is coming to an end.
For now there are only 65 missionaries left—and 19 of these are in prison
Only four missionary Bishops are left. and two are in jail.
About 80 Bishops have been expelled since 1949. Four have been executed or died in prison.
In 1949 there were 3,000 missionary priests. To-day there are only 37, and 17 are in jail.
There were 3.000 laybrothers. Only one is left.
There were 2.000 nuns. Only 23 are left.
The heroism of both priests and people is strikingly illustrated in the experiences of one of the latest missionaries to he expelled. Almost everything seems to have happened to Fr. Henri de Bascher, a French Jesuit who has arrived in Hong Kong.
He was ordained in China in 1937 and two years later was sent to the Haichow prefecture. In 1946 he just missed being caught with two other French priests. three Chinese priests and four Chinese nuns who were shot bt the Communists.
The next year he was tried by a people's court while he knelt before a crowd in a village square. The people refused to declare him but he was imprisoned for two months, Released, he took to farming and was allowed tre live—in a sort of mud hut—among his people. He earned his living by tilling the soil and growing cotton. The Communists called him a " model worker."
He learned to make cloth with his cotton. and turned his hand to tailoring. making clothes which he sold. When he arrived in Hong Kong he was in fact wearing clothing he made from the cotton he S rew, After the fall of Shanghai Fr. de Bascher was forbidden to carry on his ministry. But for about two years he celebrated Mass secretly, without vestments. At times the Blessed Sacrament was hidden in a ball of cotton.
The restrictions were relaxed and his people were able to go to him for the sacraments. But they were watched so carefully and threatened so often that they dared not come in any great numbers.
Fr. de Bascher could not go out to visit the sick. In his place, lay Catholics took Holy Communion to the dying.
One laybrother
Another of the latest arrivals in Hong Kong is Fr. Mansuctus Maggini, an Italian Franciscan.
Fr. Maggini was saying Mass in Laohokow one morning in February, 1952, when police came and arrested him, together with Bishop Ferroni and eight other priests. The Bishop is believed to be still in prison, Fr. Maggini's hands were manacled for over two t ears.
One of the Charges against him was that he planned to dedicate a church to Our Lady of Fatima. The Communists said that this devotion was strictly anti-Russian.
The last but one of the laybrothers left in China—hut now expelled—is Brother Xavier Coupe, a French Jesuit. Brother Xavier had been working at an orphanage in Shanghai for 44 t ears.