1952 - Francis Xavier Ford

February 21, 1952

Guangzhou, Guangdong

Francis Xavier Ford.

Francis Xavier Ford would have to reckoned as one of the greatest American missionaries—Protestant or Catholic—to China. He was born prematurely on January 11, 1892. The doctors did not expect the tiny infant to live, but Ford’s godly parents prayed earnestly, asking God to intervene and spare the life of their son. They unreservedly dedicated Francis to the service of Christ. God spared the boy’s life and they kept their promise to raise him for His service.

Ford joined Maryknoll in New York as a young man, and immediately encouraged them to establish a missionary arm. In 1918 he was one of the first group of four Maryknoll missionaries to China, arriving in the town of Yangjiang in southwest Guangdong Province, about 150 miles (243 km) downriver from the provincial capital of Guangzhou (Canton). A French priest with the Missions Etrangères de Paris had been labouring in Yangjiang for years. He wrote to Maryknoll, “The seed sprang up encouragingly until unfavourable circumstances interfered…. Your missioners will have to work hard and they will have to suffer.”[1]

Ford quickly distinguished himself as a man of integrity and passion, and the local believers loved him deeply. He was first and foremost concerned with the establishment of seminaries and Bible schools in as many locations as possible. He told his fellow missionaries,

“Never look down on the Chinese people…. We have very little to offer them of our own American culture because we are only barely 200 years old…. When you introduce the people to Christianity, go back to the time when the Church was a fishing vessel along the Sea of Galilee.”[2]

Another theme of his messages was that Christians should prepare for coming times of persecution. He wrote to his priests,

“If persecution comes, we will carry on with our work as long as possible, in the conviction that it is the will of God, and that he can bring good out of evil…. The motto of our apostolate is condolere, which means sympathizing with the sorrows of those who are in trouble, sharing in their sufferings, and seeing all human suffering in relation to the Passion of Christ.”[3]

In 1925 Ford transferred to the town of Meizhou (then called Kaying) in northeast Guangdong. When he arrived, the baptismal records showed there were 4,000 Catholics scattered throughout a vast geographic area within the diocese. Ford challenged every follower of Christ not to sit back, but to get busy serving their fellow men. By 1940, just 15 years later, the church membership in Meizhou had grown five-fold to about 20,000.[4] Ford’s godly life impressed everyone he came into contact with. He quickly rose through the Catholic ranks, being ordained Superior, Prefect Apostolic, and Vicar Apostolic. On September 21, 1936, he was consecrated the Bishop of Meizhou.

When it became apparent that the Communists would soon take power in China, Ford publicly expressed his concern for the safety of Christians, while at the same time assuring his colleagues that he would stay in China and endure the consequences, regardless of what might come. At the beginning of 1949 he said,

“In the present circumstances, the persecution is not purely nor mainly anti-foreign, but also anti-religious. Hence, flight would be a negative apostacy or at least a dereliction of duty, a failure to minister to our people at the very moment they especially need spiritual aid to witness for Christ.”[5]

Francis Xavier Ford’s vow was tested on the morning of December 23, 1950. Two jeeps full of Communist soldiers pulled up outside the Catholic mission in Meizhou. They bound Ford and went through the premises, searching for “evidence” to use against the American and his colleagues. In 1935 the Catholic priest Harry Bush had been captured by bandits, and Ford had worked with American embassy staff to try to secure Bush’s release. Ford still had the letters between himself and the embassy. This was used as evidence that Ford was an American spy. He was charged with being anti-communist, counter-revolutionary, and of engaging in espionage activities.

On April 15, 1951, after being confined in one room at the mission for almost four months, Ford and his secretary, Joan Marie Ryan, were bound with rope and led away by 30 armed soldiers. After a farcical “trial,” in which the pair were not allowed to speak, they were sent to prison in Guangzhou. The Communists decided to make the most of their high-profile prisoner, and took him to a series of towns where the local population was encouraged to come out and rile against the wicked criminals. As they were taken to the Meizhou bus station, local Catholics came out to catch a final glimpse of their beloved bishop. One reported that the duo was

“manacled with ropes, their arms held tight behind their backs, painfully pulling back their head and shoulders…. Through the streets of the city he loved so dearly, the Bishop marched, bound now like a common, dangerous criminal, taunted, jeered, and reviled by students who lined the streets. There was still proud dignity in his head held high.”[6]

At town after town Ford and Ryan were paraded around to the jeers and hatred of enraged crowds, who shouted, “Death to the American spies!” This was Ford’s earthly reward for 33-years of sacrificial and loving labours in China. At the town of Xingning,

“A wall of shouting, screaming middle school students lined the road armed with sticks and stones and refuse. Both prisoners were struck repeatedly by thrown objects; both were severely beaten…one of the students thrust a stick between the Bishop’s legs and tripped him. When he fell, the students began to club him as the guards looked on. The crowd, carried away with its madness, got completely out of hand. The guards moved away helplessly, and the two prisoners were left to the accumulated fury and vicious frenzy of the youths. There was horrible, incredible confusion. The two missioners received blow after blow till their bodies were numb; they could scarcely move. Only the quiet, unshakeable dignity of the bishop saved their lives.”[7]

Finally, after four torturous days’ travel, Ford and Ryan arrived in Guangzhou Prison. At the gate, the semi-conscious Ford whispered to Joan Marie Ryan, “We’re going to prison in honour of Christ and it is no disgrace.”[8]

One of many cartoons showing Ford and Ryan as American spies operating behind a cloak of religion.

The Communist press went to work slandering Ford at every opportunity. Newspapers the length of the country announced that an important American spy had been captured, and his punishment would fit the “terrible cruelty” he had inflicted on the Chinese people for so many years. Cartoons and caricatures were published, depicting Ford preaching from the Bible, while hidden behind him Joan Marie Ryan was busy transmitting state secrets to the Americans.

Ford and Ryan were put in separate cells, and brainwashing interrogation sessions were held day and night. The constant emotional and mental wearing down gradually got to Ford, and he drifted between sanity and insanity. It was said that “after 11 months of imprisonment Ford got into the habit of pinching his wrists and repeating ‘My name is Francis Xavier Ford, my name is Francis Xavier Ford.’”[9] The next time Joan Marie Ryan saw Bishop Ford was in January 1952. She said,

“His neck was very thin and his hair was white. He was emaciated and barely able to stand up under his own power. HHHis legs hung loose like those of a rag doll, so thin, so painfully limp. He seemed hardly to have strength enough to hold on to his helper who carried him without effort; the Bishop was not much more than a skeleton…. I got a good look at his face, once so full and smiling, so strong and sure. Now he was emaciated, looking like an old man of a hundred years.”[10]

The faithful secretary recalled what Ford had said years before in Meizhou when he contemplated the Communist brutality to come: “When you say your prayers, pray that when it comes, it comes quickly. It is the long, drawn-out martyrdoms that are the hardest to take.”[11] For months Ryan did not see Ford. On August 16, 1952, she was called into the prison warden’s office and told that the bishop had died on February 21st, almost six months earlier. She was shown six photographs of the ailing missionary and told the People’s Republic of China had done all they could to save his life, but that “natural illness and old age” had overtaken him. Ryan was taken to a graveyard and shown a headstone that simply said, “Ford’s grave, February 21, 1952.” She noticed that the paint on the headstone was fresh, and Ryan realized the display was just a bid by the Communists to use her to announce Ford’s death to the world. A few days later she was taken to the border and released back into freedom in Hong Kong.

Francis Xavier Ford was 60-years-old at the time of his martyrdom. As a premature baby, Ford’s parents had dedicated their son to God, and now he had left this wearisome world after faithfully serving Christ all his life. Catholic historian Jean-Paul Wiest says that Ford

“left his imprint not only on Maryknoll but also on the whole church. In his theology and his methods, he was for the most part a ground-breaker who prepared the way for the translation of the Catholic church at Vatican II. But above all, he emerges as a spiritual man possessed by a vision, which today still remains meaningful.”[12]

1. Donovan, The Pagoda and the Cross, 27.
2. Jean-Paul Wiest, “The Legacy of Bishop Francis X. Ford,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research (July 1988), 137.
3. Monsterleet, Martyrs in China, 40.
4. Donovan, The Pagoda and the Cross, 119.
5. Donovan, The Pagoda and the Cross, 178.
6. Donovan, The Pagoda and the Cross, 192-193.
7. Donovan, The Pagoda and the Cross, 194.
8. Donovan, The Pagoda and the Cross, 196.
9. Monsterleet, Martyrs in China, 63. Also see China Missionary Bulletin (December 1952), 40.
10. Donovan, The Pagoda and the Cross, 199-200.
11. Donovan, The Pagoda and the Cross, 199.
12. Wiest, “The Legacy of Bishop Francis X. Ford,” 135.