He was apostolic administrator of Kunming and two other dioceses and died when he was over ninety years old. He was a seminarian in 1949 when the communists arrived. He had to wait until 1995 to be ordained a priest when he was released from prison, while working in a workshop. “Very respected by everyone, he lived a simple and hard life.”
Kunming () – He had to wait more than forty years to be ordained a priest. He spent decades in prison or forced to work in a factory, never ceasing to cultivate his vocation, which he then lived to the end, serving his flock in Yunnan. In the human history of Father Jacob Huang Guirong, former apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Kunming, the entire recent history of Catholicism in China – with all its wounds and its extraordinary capacity for rebirth – is concentrated. He passed away on the afternoon of June 16 in Leping County at the age of over ninety.
He was born on July 25, 1933 (or 1932) in Huaping County, Lijiang. He was the youngest son of a Catholic family and had two sisters. As a child he studied at the local parochial school and then entered the Kunming seminary. In 1949, the arrival of the communists forced the seminary to close, but the seed of vocation that the teenager Huang Guirong carried in his heart would prove stronger than any trial.
In 1953 – with the consent of Bishop Luis He Dezong, apostolic administrator of the Church of Kunming after the forced departure of Archbishop Alexandre Derouineau, French missionary of the MEP – young Jacob studied Theology and Philosophy for a time in the cathedral. But two years later he was forced to work as a laborer in an automobile repair shop. However, this did not prevent him from continuing to actively participate in the local Catholic community. Precisely for that reason in 1966 – when the new storm of the Cultural Revolution arrived – he was arrested and spent more than ten years in prison.
When he was released from prison in 1978 he returned to work at a farm machinery shop in Mile County. And when it also closed in 1986 he continued living in the village of Xiaomabu working as a carpenter and it is said that in those years of the first timid openings in China he preached the Gospel while doing his work. In 1994, after about a year of formation with Bishop He Dezong—who, having also experienced labor camps during the Cultural Revolution, was patiently rebuilding the local Church—he was deemed fit to be a priest. Fr. Huang’s long-awaited ordination took place on June 4, 1995 at Zhaotong Cathedral, at the hands of Bishop Matteo Chen Muchen, then 92 years old, who died just two years later.
The apostolic administrator He Dezong assigned him to Lefeng Village, Qujing District, as a priest of this church. Then, in February 2012, after the death of Fr. Zhang Wenchang – who had taken over from Bishop He Dezong at the head of the Kunming community and the other two dioceses of Yunnan – Fr. Huang became an apostolic administrator. However, the situation became complex when official bodies controlled by the Party imposed the episcopal ordination of the then young priest Ma Yinglin without the mandate of the Holy See. A rift that Pope Francis only bridged in 2018, when the provisional agreement between Rome and Beijing on the appointment of bishops was first signed and Bishop Ma was readmitted to full ecclesial communion, along with six other Chinese prelates illicitly ordained as he.
In all these circumstances, the former apostolic administrator always remained an exemplary figure for everyone. “Father Jacob was a highly respected priest in the Church of Yunnan – he says in the biographical note sent to along with the news of his death – that he lived a simple and hard life, and was meticulous, conscientious and responsible in his pastoral work. “In today’s materialistic society, being able to maintain such a state of purity and remain uncontaminated is a miracle given by God to our times.”
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