The Jesuits, 1534-1921

The missionaries of the old Society would recognize this light hearted modern American apostle as their brother.

Another example in a region which is the very opposite of Alaska will convince the skeptic that the modern Jesuit retains the old heroic spirit of the missions. This time we are in the deadly swamps and forests of British Honduras and the apostle there is Father William Stanton of the Missouri province. As a scholastic he was teaching the dark skinned boys of Belize and incidentally gathering numberless specimens of tropical flora and fauna for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. From there he went to the other end of the earth and was put at scientific work in the Observatory at Manila. He was the first American priest ordained in the Philippines, and his initial ministerial work was to attend to the American soldiers, who were dying by scores of cholera. After that we find him again in Honduras, no longer in college but in the bush with about 800 Maya Indians, whose language he did not know but soon learned. He was still a naturalist but first of all he was absorbed in the care of the lazy and degraded Indians. His hut was made of sticks plastered with mud and thatched with palm leaves and he was all alone.

"Roads! Roads!" he writes, "they are simply unspeakable. It's only a little over nine miles from Benque Viejo to Cayo but it took me five hours to do it on horseback. Rain and the darkness caught me. It was so dark I could not see my horse's head but my Angel Guardian brought me through all right… The only beasts that bother me are the garrapatas (ticks). I have to spend from an hour and a half to two hours picking them out of my flesh and my whole body is thickly peppered with blotchy sores where they have left their mark. But one can't expect to have everything his own way in this life even in the paradise of Benque. By the way, before I forget, would you try to send me a wash basin or bowl of glazed metal. I have nothing but the huge tin dishpan of the kitchen to wash my face in. It's a little inconvenient to scour the grease out every time I want to wash and I don't want to fall into real Spanish costumbres." His table was a packing case, his chair a box of tinned goods, his bed four ropes and a mat woven of palm leaves. He had one cup, plate and saucer.

"I have forty stations to get around to, and I haven't a decent crucifix, or ciborium, and only one chalice. I am not squealing for my house but for the Lord's. My good little mud house is a palace, even if the pigs and goats of the village do break in now and then to make a meal off one's old boots or the scabbard of one's machete. My bush church is fine; same architecture as my house, only larger. In church, the men stand around the walls, while the women and children squat on the clay floor and the babies roll all over, garbed only in angelic innocence."

Of one of his journeys he writes: "I have just returned from a river trip, after being away from home thirty-one days moving about from place to place among my scattered people on the river banks and in the bush. My health was good until last week when I got a little stroke from the heat, followed by several days' fever which put me on my back for four days, but I am now myself again. Fortunately I had only three more days' journey, and with the help of my two faithful Indians I arrived safely at Benque." These "three days," though he does not say so, were days of torture, and his Indians wondered if they could get him back alive. "I am now back as far as Cayo, arriving at 1.30 this morning. Everything is flooded with mud and water. I must get a horse and get out to Benque today, as I hear Father Henneman is down with fever. I have ten miles more to make, and over a terrible road through the bush, with the horse up to his belly in mud and water most of the time; but with the Lord's help I hope to be safe at home before night. I have been away only a week, having made some hundred and sixty miles on horseback, the whole of it through a dense jungle. I had to cut my way through with my machete, for the rank vegetation and hanging lianas completely closed the narrow trail."

He had gone out to visit a village and crossed a ford on the way. The river was high and the current strong. His horse was swept off his feet and Father Stanton slipped out of his saddle and swam beside the animal. Some quarter of a mile below there was a dangerous fall in the river, but they managed to reach the bank a hundred feet above the fall. He caught hold of a branch, but it broke and he was swept down the stream. With a prayer to his Guardian Angel he struck out for the deepest water and went over the fall. Some Indians near the bank saw the bearded white man go over the roaring cataract and they thought he was a wizard, but he went safely through, and then with long powerful strokes (he was a marvellous swimmer) he made for the bank. Then waving his hand to the startled Indians, he cut his way with his machete through the bush to look for his horse. Another time we find him returning after what he calls a "stiff trip," soaking wet all the time, for he had to swim across a swift river with boots and clothes on, he was all day in the saddle, was caught one night in the jungle in a swamp, pitch dark, knee deep in the mud – "Clouds of mosquitos and swarms of fiery ants had taken their fill of me," he writes, "while the blood sucking vampire bats lapped my poor horse. We got out all right and I had the consolation of being told by an Indian that three big tigers (jaguars) had been killed near the place last month."

On April 13, 1909, he says: "Just at present I am flat on my back with an attack of something, apparently acute articular rheumatism." He felt it, the first time while he was working in the garden. "I simply squirmed on the ground and screeched like a wild Indian." And yet he starts off to Belize on horseback to see the doctor, which meant a distant journey of four days, and he had to sleep in the bush one night. From Belize he returned by water in a "pitpan," a freight boat for shallow rivers that can easily upset in the slightest current. That meant eight weary days without room even to stretch himself out at night; with no awning in the day to shield him from the sun and frequently drenched by torrential rains. In September he is following his horse through the mud of the jungle. In October he was sent for again by the doctor at Belize, and returns a second time to his mission which meant eight days in the forest alone.

Finally, Father Stanton was ordered home to St. Louis, and it was found that his whole body was ringed around with a monstrous growth of cancer. He died in intense agony, but never spoke of his sufferings. In his delirium he was talking about Honduras. Only once he said "I am so long a-dying." He finally expired on March 10, 1910. He had just completed his fortieth year, but his missionary work was equal to anything in the old Society.

When the Jesuits resumed work in China in 1841 they found that all over the country there were great numbers of natives who had kept the Faith in spite of the bitter persecutions to which they had been subjected during the absence of the missionaries. The Province of Kiang-nan, the capital of which is Nankin, and the city where Ricci began his apostolic labors, welcomed back the great man's brethren.

Kiang-nan is a territory half the size of France. In the west and south-west it is hilly, but the rest of it is an immense plain watered by the Yang-tse-Kiang and by countless lakes, streams and canals. It is marvellously fertile and furnishes a double crop every year. The rivers swarm with fish, and the land with human beings. In it are many large cities such as Shanghai with its 650,000 inhabitants; Tchen-Kiang with 170,000, Odi-si with 200,000 and so on. Nankin is the residence of the viceroy, and was formerly the "Capital of the south," and the rival of Pekin, but later it had only 130,000 people within its walls. At present, however, it is reviving and is credited with three or four hundred thousand inhabitants. Before the Jesuits arrived, the country had been cared for by other religious orders, chiefly the Lazarists and the Fathers of the Missions Etrangères.

In the neighborhood of Shanghai, there were 48,00 °Catholic Chinese who dated back through their ancestors to the time of the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth century. Perhaps four thousand more might have been found in the rest of the province, but they were submerged in the mass of 45,000,000 idolaters. The outlook on the whole was consoling, for the vicar Apostolic, Mgr. de Besi, had founded a seminary, which before 1907 furnished more than one hundred native priests. The work of the Holy Childhood was enthusiastically carried on, with the result that in the years 1847-48, 60,963 names appear on the baptismal registers. In 1849 the Jesuits had establishments at Nankin, Ousi and along the Grand Canal. That year, however, was made gloomy by floods, famine and sickness. Nevertheless the trials had the good result of compelling the erection of orphanages where the Faith could be taught without difficulty. In 1852 the revolt against the Manchu dynasty broke out, and in 1853 Nankin and Shanghai were sacked. Everything Christian disappeared in the general carnage; but in 1855 the imperial troops with the aid of the French Admiral Laguerre entered Shanghai, but Nankin and the provinces remained in the hands of the rebels.

Certain ecclesiastical changes also occurred at that time. Pekin and Nankin disappeared as dioceses, and the province of Kiang-nan became a vicariate Apostolic, whose administration was entrusted to the Jesuits of Paris under Mgr. Borgniet. He was appointed in 1856. The vicariate of South-Eastern Tche-ly was given to the province of Champagne and Mgr. Languillat began his work there with three Fathers and 9,475 old Christians, the descendants of the neophytes of Pekin.

In 1860 the Chinese war broke out and the Taipings availed themselves of it for another rising. The English and French, who were fighting the emperor, held different opinions about what to do with the rebels, and finally contented themselves with defending Shanghai; leaving the rest of the country to be ravaged at will. Father Massa was thrown into prison and was about to be executed, but contrived to make his escape. His brother Louis, however, was put to death at Tsai-kia-ouan, along with a crowd of orphans whom he was trying to protect. In 1861 Father Vuillaume was killed at Pou-tong and others were robbed, taken prisoners and ill-treated. In 1862 an epidemic of cholera broke out in the province and lasted two years; the vicar Apostolic, Mgr. Borgniet, sixteen religious and four hundred of the faithful succumbed to the pestilence. In the following year six more Jesuits died. At this time General Gordon was beginning his great career. He was then only a major but he reorganized the imperial army, crushed the rebels and took Nankin. This gave a breathing spell to the missionaries; but in 1868, the Taipings were out again, under another name, and anarchy reigned for an entire year.

In the mean time the cities of Shanghai and Zikawei had relatively little to suffer, and the end of the war gave the missionaries the right to build churches, to exercise the ministry everywhere, and even to be compensated for the destruction of their property. But the rights were merely on paper, and fourteen or fifteen years of quarrels with every little mandarin in the country followed. Nevertheless the work went on. At Zikawei, for instance, schools were established, a printing-establishment inaugurated, and in 1872 the observatory which was soon to be famous in all the Orient was begun. Progress was also made at Shanghai. Of course the usual burnings and plunderings, with occasional massacre of groups of Christians continued, but not much attention was paid to these disturbances until 1878, when the Church at Nankin was set on fire, and Sisters of Charity, priests, and Christians in general, among whom was the French consul, were all ruthlessly murdered. The imperial government then took cognizance of the outbreak, and eleven alleged culprits were put to death. That helped to calm the mob, and evangelical work was resumed, so that Kiang-nan, which had 70,685 Christians in 1866 counted over 100,000 in 1882. In the year 1900 there were 124,000 of whom 55,171 were adults. There were also 50,000 catechumens preparing for baptism. The number of priests had grown to 159, of whom 42 were Chinese. The 940 schools had an attendance of 18,563 children.

The Boxer uprising was the most formidable trial to which the mission has so far been subjected. It was organized in the court itself by Toan, the emperor's uncle, General Tong-Fou-Siang and the secretary of state, Kangi-i, and its rumblings were heard for years before the actual outbreak. In Se-tchouan, a third of the churches were destroyed, villages set on fire, missionaries thrown into prison and many Christians massacred. A priest and his people were burned in the church at Kouang-toung; and at Hou-pe, another was put to death. These outrages were as yet local, but there was every evidence that a general conspiracy was at work for the expulsion of all foreigners from the empire. Finally the Boxers, or Grand Sabres, declared themselves, and by order of the viceroy, Yu-heen, 36 °Christian villages were destroyed. That was only a beginning. Tche-ly suffered most. It was the stronghold of the rebels. In the autumn of 1899 there were conflagrations and riots everywhere. In 1900 the northern part of the mission was in flames, and forty-five Christian centres were reduced to ashes, but there were few, if any, apostacies, although thousands were put to death in the most horrible fashion. On June 20 Fathers Isore and Andlauer were murdered at the altar. On July 20 Fathers Mangin and Denn were killed, and on April 26, 1902, after peace had been concluded, Father Lomüller with his catechist and servant suffered death.

In this storm, five missionaries had been killed; Mgr. Henry Bulté died of exhaustion; 5,00 °Christians had disappeared from the country; 616 churches had been destroyed along with 381 schools and three colleges. But that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church was shown by the fact that there are now more Christians in the district than there were before the persecution. The churches have been rebuilt; priests and catechists are more numerous; the seminary is crowded, and schools and pupils and teachers are at work, as if nothing had happened. The exact figures may be found in Brou's "Jésuites missionaires au xix siécle." Shanghai and Zikawei form the center of the Vicariate of Kiang-nan. In Shanghai are a cathedral and three parish churches which provide for a Catholic population of 9,724. There are three hospitals; an orphanage with trade schools; six schools; a home for the aged; conferences of St. Vincent de Paul. At Zikawei there is a scholasticate of the Society; a grand and little seminary; a meteorological and magnetic observatory; a museum of natural history; a college with 266 students, of whom 105 are pagans; a printing-house; a bi-weekly publication, and the beginnings of a university which it is hoped will head off the tendency of the natives to go for an education to Japan or to the Japanese schools founded in China itself.

When Gregory XVI sent the Jesuits to China, it was thought that from there it would be easy for them to go to Japan to resume the work in which they had so distinguished themselves in former times. Eighty years have passed since then, and only lately, a few Jesuits have shown themselves in that country. The Fathers of the Missions Etrangères have occupied the ground and have succeeded in establishing a complete hierarchy of five bishops and have won praise for themselves by their work in missions and parishes, in polemics and conferences. A school has been attempted and an American Jesuit has lately been placed on the staff of the University of Tokio. Only that and nothing more. What the future has in store, who can tell?

It was a happy day for the new Society when in 1841 it was ordered by Gregory XVI to undertake the missions of Hindostan; the country sanctified by the labors of Francis Xavier, de Nobili, de Britto, Criminali and a host of other saintly missionaries. No work could be more acceptable. The chief obstacle in the way of success was the protectorate which Portugal exercised over the churches of the Orient. In Catholic times its kings had the right not only to nominate all the bishops of the East, but to legislate on almost the entire ecclesiastical procedure within its dominions. Not even a sacristan could be sent to the Indies without the official approval of the Portuguese government. Such a state of things was bad enough in Catholic times, but when the politics of Portugal were in the hands of infidels and enemies of the Church, it could not possibly be tolerated, no matter how persistent was the claim that the right still adhered to the crown. Another abnormality in the pretence was that the country no longer belonged to Portugal but was to a very great extent English and hence if there were to be any dictation it should come from the government of that country.

The first act of the Pope was to create a number of vicars Apostolic who were to be independent of the Archbishop of Goa. This started a war which lasted sixty years. It was called the Goanese schism, or the fight of the double jurisdiction. The vicar Apostolic of the Calcutta district was Robert St. Leger, an Irish Jesuit, who came to India with five members of the Society after his appointment on 15 April, 1834. St. Leger's jurisdiction was disputed by a number of the adherents of Goa and he retired in December, 1838. The Jesuits with him had begun a college, which was enthusiastically supported by his successor, Bishop Jean-Louis Taberd. Unfortunately he died suddenly in 1840, and the same encouragement was not given by Dr. Patrick Carew, the third vicar, with the result that the college which had begun to prosper was closed. In 1846 the Jesuits left Calcutta, but in 1860 they were recalled by Mgr. Oliffe, the successor of Dr. Carew.

The missionaries came under the leadership of Father Depelchin, who when he had finished his work in Calcutta was later to add to his glory by founding the mission of the Zambesi in Africa. They found everything in ruins. Out of a population of 2,300,000 in the city and suburbs, there were no more than seven or eight thousand Catholics, many of whom were Tamouls from Madras. Only a few of the faithful were in easy circumstances and their influence in the city amounted to nothing. There was no help for it, therefore, but to resuscitate the College of St. Francis Xavier, which had been suppressed fourteen years before. It had no furniture and its library consisted of a few books with the covers off. The college was opened nevertheless and had, on the first day, eighty students on the benches. When Bishop Oliffe died there was a dreadful possibility of the appointment of a Goanese bishop, which, for the Jesuits, meant packing up a second time and leaving Calcutta. An appeal was therefore made to Rome and Father Auguste Van Heule was named, but he died in 1865 shortly after his arrival, and in 1867, Bishop Walter Steins was called over from Bombay to take his place. By this time the college had 350 students; a new building and another situation were imperative, but Depelchin was equal to the task, and before he left Calcutta for Africa he had 500 students on the roster.

The initial work of the missionaries was the development of the colleges but they subsequently addressed themselves to the evangelization of the whole population of the city and suburbs, and to-day they have six parishes with a population of 13,000 souls, who are provided with schools, hospitals, asylums and the like. The native population, the Bengalis as they are called, were found to be hopeless. Contact with the whites has made them skeptical in religion, and morally worse than they had been originally. The only Christian Hindoos in Calcutta are Tamouls from the South.

Not finding the Bengalis apt for evangelization, they sought out their countrymen, the Ourias in the Delta of the Ganges. Their home had the unhappy distinction of being called "the famine district," the dreadful calamity being caused either by too much water or by none. In 1866 there was a drought that withered all the crops, and then came inundations that covered 68,000 acres of land, swept away hundreds of villages, and diminished the population by half a million. Orphans, of course, abounded, and in 1868 an asylum was built for them in Balasore, which served also as an evangelical centre for missionary expeditions into the interior. But this venture was not very successful, for only about 1,600 conversions resulted after years of hard labor. The Ourias, it was found, had all the bad qualities of their friends the Bengalis. Perhaps also the movement was halted because their territory was a sort of Holy Land for Hindooism. Every year 500,000 pilgrims arrived there to pray at the shrine of Vishnu, and idolatry of all kinds, from the bloody ancestral fetichism to the refined cult of the Vedas and undiluted Brahmanism, took root and flourished there. Hence a mission was begun among the Orissas still further south.

Better than anywhere else one can see at close range among the Ourias how formidable are the moral, intellectual, social and historical obstacles that oppose the progress of Christianity in Hindostan. To add to the difficulty, Protestantism with its jumble of sects had established itself there and claimed at this time 15,000 adherents. But when cholera swept over the land in 1868, the Protestant missionaries fled and many of the native converts came over to the priests who, of course, did not imitate their non-Catholic rivals in deserting their charges. Father Goffinet especially distinguished himself in this instance, going everywhere in his narrow canoe and lavishing spiritual and corporal aid on the victims. In 1873 he was joined by Father Delplace, who went still nearer the sea. Others followed, lived in the huts of the natives, satisfied their hunger with a few handfuls of rice varied by a fish on Sundays to break the monotony of the diet, with the result that, in three years, there were thirty Catholic missions between the Hoogly and the Mutlah with 3,000 converts in what had been previously a stronghold of Hindoo Protestantism.

In the same year, Father Schoff went north of Calcutta to Bardwan – "The Garden of Western Bengal." He kept away from the rich, and devoted himself to the dregs of the populace. Over and over again the superiors doubted if it were worth while, but to-day the Haris, who were previously so degraded, live in pretty villages, and the order, piety and honesty for which they are noted make one forget the ignorance, debauchery and dishonesty of the past. A group of over 5,00 °Catholics may be found there at the present time.

In these parts, the caste system prevails in all its vigors but if you go still further west into the heart of the Province of Chota-Nagpur you come upon a half-savage people, the offscouring of humanity who have been driven into the hills and forests by the conquering Aryans of the plains. They are the Ouraons of Dravidian origin; small, black as negroes, filthy, often wrapped in cow-dung and tattooed all over the body, but nevertheless light-hearted, robust and proud of their ability to perform hard work. With them also lives a more ancient race known as the Koles: men of broad flat faces which recall the Mongolian type. They are probably the aborigines. Their religion is grossly elementary – a vague adoration of the Supreme Being, superstition and ancestor worship; but with a shade of the pride that characterizes the horrible caste system of the Hindoos. The German Lutherans had essayed to convert them. Fifty rupees were paid for each adhesion, and fifty ministers devoted themselves to this apostolate. They are credited with having disbursed 3,700,000 francs by the year 1876. Then came the Anglicans who claimed 40,000 of them. In 1869 Father Stockman arrived and opened a mission at Chaibassa. In 1873 he had only a group of thirty converts. Nine years later, he had succeeded in baptising only 273, but by 1885 there were four residences in Chota-Nagpur with one out-mission. Five priests were engaged in the task.

The progress of the work, however, was comparatively slow until the young Father Constant Lievens made himself the champion of the natives in the courts. This gave it a phenomenal impulse. For years, these poor mountaineers had been cruelly exploited by Hindoo traders from Calcutta. As soon as the natives had contrived to cultivate a bit of land they were loaded down with taxes and enforced contributions, haled before the magistrates and flung into jail to rot. Unfortunately the police regulations were all in favor of the aggressors. Hence there were incessant riots and massacres, and when the English authorities tried in good faith to remedy matters, they could find no one among these poor outcasts fit to hold any position of responsibility. The Lutherans presented themselves and promised protection for those who would join the sect, and many went over to them, but the government disapproved of these unworthy tactics, as calculated only to make things worse in the end. It was like the temptation on the mountain.