Beijing (AsiaNews) – The Church in China bid its last farewell to its oldest priest, Fr Joseph Guo Fude, SVD, who passed away in Jining, Shandong province, on 30 December, a few weeks shy of his 105th birthday.
With his death, very few priests ordained before the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949 are left, 25 according to the Chinese Catholic website Xinde.
Fr Guo Fude was born on 1 February 1920 into a family of fervent Catholics in Beiyi, a village in Zaozhuang Prefecture. He entered the minor seminary in Yanzhou at the age of 13 where he lived through the troubled years of the Japanese invasion.
In 1941 he moved to the major seminary in Daizhuang. On 13 April 1947, he was ordained with two fellow seminarians by the then bishop of Yanzhou, Mgr Theodor Schu, a German Verbite missionary who sent him to complete his studies at the Verbite seminary in Manila.
In 1950, just as life under the new communist regime was getting harsher, Fr Guo Fude returned to China, to live his ministry among his people at a difficult hour.
It was not easy. “I did not agree to report on other members of the clergy and refused to cooperate with the authorities,” he wrote in his memoirs, published a few years ago.
“In 1959, during the 'ideological reform' movement, I was arrested and spent eight and a half years in prison, accused of subversive activity against the state.”
He was arrested a second time in 1967, during the Cultural Revolution, charged as a "foreign spy”. Released in 1979, he was arrested a third time again in 1982 for spreading the faith.
Overall, Fr Guo Fude spent 25 years in detention and only in the late 1980s was he able to resume his pastoral ministry in Jining, teaching for a few years in the seminary and then continuing until after the age of 90 to serve some local Catholic communities.
"Looking back on my life," he wrote on his 100th birthday, "prison became a place where I could reflect, pray and grow spiritually.
“My imprisonment gave me the strength to face life's challenges and continue to serve God, knowing that every trial was part of His divine plan. My experience in prison taught me that earthly riches are ephemeral, while faith in God is the only true wealth.”
During Fr Guo’s funeral, the current bishop of Yanzhou, Mgr John Lu Peisen, remembered his fidelity to the Gospel in the "ups and downs" of his long and tortuous life.
“Fr Guo dedicated his entire life to writing a wonderful story of selflessness and love, using his life as a pen and time as ink,” he said in his homily. “Today, many remember his deep but warm eyes, and the phrase that inspired countless young priests and faithful.”
“The priesthood,” Fr Guo noted, “is not a worldly profession, but a divine grace given by God. You must serve the people without being defiled by the worldly spirit; you must love everyone, without seeking anything for yourself; you must first learn to bend down and wash the feet of others, to be worthy to approach the Body and Blood of Christ.”
