Yuanling, Hunan, China: Peace
by Father Rob Carbonneau, C.P.
Edited from the orginal for online publication
New grave marker for Catholic missionaries
buried in Yuanling, Hunan, China
Deceased Catholic missionaries rest in peace in Yuanling, west Hunan, China. Their gravestone prompts us to think in new ways about China. It is a symbol of reconciliation and hope. Take a moment to touch the Chinese characters and English words with your eyes. Looking at the gravestone—built during the summer of 2004—is a living testament to the faith and hope of local Catholics in west Hunan, China. Ponder the picture. It is an invitation to learn from this Chinese story of history and faith.
In April 2004 I received an email invitation to visit China. It was a surprise. It came without warning. Included in the invitation was the news that the bodies of seventeen Catholic missionaries who had been buried in Yuanling from 1925-1950 were to be exhumed and reburied at a new location.
I knew this to be a sacred invitation. I had got the email several days before I was to preach at the three April 24-25 weekend liturgies at St. Joseph's Monastery Parish in Baltimore, Maryland. The topic of the homily was to be the prayerful remembrance of Father Godfrey Holbein, C.P. He had grown up in that Irvington neighborhood. To the shock of United States Catholics, he and Fathers Walter Coveyou, C.P. and Clement Seybold, C.P. were murdered by Chinese bandits on April 24, 1929.
Having written my 1992 Georgetown history dissertation on the life, death, and memory of the three priests, it was an event etched in my heart. Now the email from China transformed the tone of my Sunday homily. With the imagination of faith I knew that I was reflecting on a sixtieth anniversary that was both historic and very much alive in the present moment.
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