Monday, July 06, 2009

"The Prime Minister of China who became a Benedictine Abbot"

From a blog I featured recently, that of Mr. Andrew Cusack, came to my notice the interesting story of The Prime Minister of China who became a Benedictine Abbot which he in turn noticed in a recent edition of The Catholic Herald.


CHRISTIANITY HAS A LONG and varied history in China stretching over at least one-and-a-half millenia. The ancient country has even had Christian leaders, such as the Congregationalist founder of the Chinese Republic, Sun Yat-sen, and his Methodist successor, Gen. Chiang Kai-shek (head of the Kuomintang for nearly forty years). Still, until I read this fascinating story in the Catholic Herald I had no idea that there was a Prime Minister of China, Lou Tseng-tsiang (陸徵祥), who ended his days as a Benedictine monk by the name of Dom Pierre-Célestin.

More recent articles:

For more articles, see the NLM archives: