CHINA-SINGAPORE-FRANCE Fr. Charbonnier, witness to the rebirth of the Church in China

Priest of the Foreign Missions of Paris, he died in France at the age of 91. Pioneer in the reunion with the communities that had survived the Cultural Revolution, he published in 1986 a “Guide to the Catholic Church in China” which was a fundamental point of reference. He wrote: “The faith of Chinese Christians is that of their ancestors. If some still consider them foreigners, it is because they belong to a kingdom that is not of this world.”

Paris () – The Church in China mourns today the death of a great friend and precious collaborator: the French missionary Fr. Jean Charbonnier, from the Missions Etrangères de Paris (MEP). He passed away this morning, at the age of 91, at the home of the Lauris Institute (France). With him goes a great witness to the rebirth of Chinese Catholic communities after the harsh experience of persecution during the years of the Cultural Revolution.

He was a missionary in Singapore from 1959, where he studied Mandarin and began his ministry serving the Chinese communities. But the p. Charbonnier became a crucial figure at the time of the revival of relations with the Churches in China, which began with the first openings in the 1970s. To him, in 1980, the Foreign Missions of Paris entrusted the direction of the “Service China”, with the task of trying to re-establish contact with the local communities of 14 different dioceses, which at the beginning of the fifties up to 250 missionaries of the Institute they had been forced to leave due to the expulsion that Mao had decreed.

In this effort, the name of Fr. Charbonnier is associated in memory with that of three other great missionary-sinologists from other institutes who had lived the same experience: together with Fr. Angelo Lazzarotto (Italian from PIME), Fr. Jerome Heyndricks (Belgian of the Scheut missionaries) and the Polish SVD Roman Malek (died in 2019) were called “the gang of four”, ironically referring to the four leaders of the Chinese Communist Party arrested in 1976 ending the Cultural Revolution. His collaboration and friendship with Fr. Giancarlo Politi, PIME missionary who also passed away in 2019.

The p. Charbonnier is remembered for the ‘Guide to the Catholic Church in China’, a valuable tool that he compiled from his travels through the different provinces of the country. First published in 1986 in English and Mandarin – and later updated in several editions up to 2008 – it was an indispensable reference point for facilitating encounters between Catholic communities in mainland China and those visiting from abroad. His Histoire des Chrétienes de Chine dates from 1992 and was updated ten years later. A story of the deep roots of the Christian faith on Chinese soil, from the Xi’an stele to the death and resurrection of the 20th century. “Their Christian faith of his,” he wrote in the introduction, “is the faith of his ancestors. Still fragile in the first and second generations, but rooted in family tradition by virtue of the same Chinese principle of filial piety.” “Christians who” are of Chinese culture and we don’t need to show it, “he added. And if they continue to be treated as foreigners” it is only because they belong to a kingdom that is not of this world. But this does not prevent them from courageously following their commitment and actively working for the renewal of their own society.”

Finally, in September 1993, Fr. Charbonnier was called from Singapore to France, to the headquarters of the Missions Etrangères de Paris, with another valuable task for the Church in China: to accompany the seminarians who would come to study in France from the dioceses of mainland China. In this, too, he was a pioneer, and in 1994 he welcomed the first four, who came from the dioceses of Shanghai and Wuhan. Another seed sown by this missionary that today bears fruit in China.