China’s Oldest Bishop Dies at 100

Oldest bishop dies at 100: Priestly career included 30 years imprisonment 
ICC Note: Bishop John Baptist Liu Jingshan spent three decades in a labor camp for his faith. Yet, this did not stop him from continuing in ministry, and at age 70 he began traveling by bicycle to carry out pastoral work among a predominantly Muslim community.  
02/05/2013 China (UCAN) -China’s oldest Catholic bishop, John Baptist Liu Jingshan of Yinchuan (Ningxia), has died at the age of 100.
He passed away on Monday at the cathedral in Yinchuan city, capital of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northern China, where he spent much of his life after his retirement in 2009.
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The elderly prelate has been credited with restoring the Church community in Ningxia after arriving there in 1983, after suffering 30 years of imprisonment in a labor camp.
Father Joseph Zhang Jianding, who knew Bishop Liu for 20 years, described him as kind and amiable, yet he set down strict demands on his priests and seminarians.
“He never tolerated any fault in my priestly life and work. He often criticized and corrected me harshly, sometimes even lost his temper. But he forgave me afterwards as if nothing had happened.”
Bishop Liu was born in 1913 in Bameng diocese, Inner Mongolia. He entered the minor seminary in 1929 and studied in two major seminaries from 1935 to 1942, while Japanese troops were occupying China.
Upon becoming a priest in 1942, he served in a parish and then a minor seminary. In 1951, he was jailed and sentenced to a labor camp. In 1970, he was released and sent home to work as a farmer.
He began teaching in a school and resumed pastoral work to restore the Church in 1979 after the Cultural Revolution ended and the government allowed religious activities to commence again.
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