Bishop Peter Joseph Fan Xueyan; Imprisoned by China
Bishop Peter Joseph Fan Xueyan, 84, who was imprisoned in China for more than 30 years for refusing to break ties with the Vatican. Fan was under various forms of detention for most of the last 34 years, making him one of the world’s longest-serving prisoners of conscience. He was ordained a bishop in 1951, shortly before China’s new Communist government forced the Chinese Catholic Church to break relations with the Vatican in the name of anti-imperialism. In Beijing on April 13 of pneumonia.
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