1970 - Lei Zhenxia, He Nai, & Li Dehua

February – March 1970

Taiyuan, Shanxi

A priest from the government-sanctioned Catholic Patriotic Association lighting a candle.

During the excesses of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) the government under Mao Zedong was determined to wipe the existence of Christianity from China once and for all. In the early 1950s the Communist authorities had launched a campaign to control the Catholic Church in China. They established the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), which became the official arm of Catholicism in China. People were allowed to believe in God, as long as they kept their faith within the confines of the regulated church buildings and submitted to the restrictions placed on them by the atheistic leaders of the nation.

Thousands of Catholics refused to join the CPA, sensing the organization was a trap set up to strip Christ of the Lordship of His Church. Many gained a martyr’s crown because of their stand, while those who had joined the CPA were often viewed as traitors to the cause of Christ.

In 1970 there was an acute shortage of grain in Shanxi Province, and the people protested against the government. The authorities responded by crushing those who had dared to stand up against them. Hundreds of residents in the provincial capital Taiyuan were arrested and thrown into prison. Three Catholic priests were implicated in the demonstration. Whether they had any involvement at all, or if the government just saw it as a good opportunity to further persecute the Church, is unclear.

What is surprising is that two of the arrested priests had been appointed by the government’s own CPA. Bishop Li Dehua was arrested along with Vicar General He Nai. An underground Catholic leader, 56-year-old Bishop Lei Zhenxia of Fenyang Diocese in Shanxi, was also charged in helping organize the demonstration, even though he was inside Taiyuan Prison at the time, serving a sentence that had been passed on him 15 years earlier in 1955![1]

All three men were sentenced to death by firing squad. Lei and He were shot on February 16, 1970, while the bullet that sent Li Dehua into the arms of Jesus was fired about one month later.

1. For a summary of the life of Bishop Lei Zhenxia, see Anthony S. K. Lam, The Catholic Church in Present-Day China, Through Darkness and Light (Hong Kong: The Holy Spirit Study Centre, 1994), chapter 2.