Christmas Eve Mass in Peking: a Beleaguered Church Reopens

More than 4,000 people crowded into the newly restored Cathedral of Our Savior on Tuesday for a Christmas Eve midnight Mass, the first services at the church in 28 years.

Many youthful worshipers heard the choir sing “Silent Night” in Chinese.

Resplendent in white silk robes and embroidered mitre, the bishop of Peking, Michael Fu Tieshan, burned incense and sprinkled holy water to bless the Beitang (Northern Cathedral), which was closed during persecution in 1958 at the height of a campaign against “rightist deviation” and used as a gymnasium and storeroom for a factory.

During the Cultural Revolution in the late-1960s, Red Guards turned the entire interior into a shambles.

Many worshipers Tuesday recalled their persecution at the hands of Maoist zealots.

“It was a terrible day when they closed Beitang,” said a 75-year-old former nun, clutching her rosary.

“But I knew God, who is all-powerful, would reopen the church one day. When, I did not know. That was for God to decide. Today we are full of joy and happiness.”

One elderly nun, Sister Mary, said she became a Franciscan nun more than 50 years ago. The daughter of a British father and a Chinese mother, she said the worst years had been during the Cultural Revolution.

“The Red Guards wanted to kill us. They killed one and made the rest of us make toy guns for the government,” she said.

She and the other worshipers knelt in fervent prayer as Fu led a procession of choirboys in red and white cassocks around the church, to the sound of Latin hymns and an electric organ.

Bishop Fu is a member of the Patriotic Catholic Church, set up by the state after it expelled foreign missionaries and broke with Rome in the 1950s.

The church, Peking’s largest, was built in 1887 in German gothic style. It has been restored to its former elegance.