Beda Chang () (c. 1905 – November 11, 1951) was a Chinese

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

priest A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deity, deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in parti ...

. He was

martyr A martyr (, ''mártys'', 'witness' Word stem, stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an external party. In ...

ed after being tortured during a wave of

persecution Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another individual or group. The most common forms are religious persecution, racism, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these term ...

by the

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

government.

Biography

Born as Zhang Zhengming () to a Shanghai family which had been Catholic for many generations, he studied at St Ignatius College in Shanghai and completed his doctorate of letters in

sinology Sinology, also referred to as China studies, is a subfield of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on China. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of the Chinese civilization p ...

at the University of Paris in 1937. He became dean of faculty of arts at

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

's Aurora University. Because he refused to renounce his faith and to cooperate with the government in their persecution of the Church, Chang was arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and then died.Excerpt from a 1952 speech by Archbishop Fulton Sheen at University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy
/ref> William Aedan McGrath, in the cell opposite Chang, reported that he saw the priest languishing and vomiting in the cell for two months before he died on the morning of November 11, 1951.

Veneration

Chang's body was returned to the Church the next day on November 12 and Shanghai's Catholics began to venerate him as a martyr, turning out in great numbers for a series of requiem Masses. The government issued a statement denouncing the prayers and Masses for Chang as a "new type of bacteria warfare by the imperialists – a counterrevolutionary mental bacteria." The police guarded the grave to prevent veneration, but reports of miracles accomplished through the intercession of Chang began to be reported. The Chinese authorities later admonished Shanghai's Catholic Bishop Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei.

Biography

Veneration

References

Further reading