The history of the rosary in China is a history of faith that crosses seas, wars, prisons and persecutions. It is not the story of a punctual miracle but of a chain of silent wonders, of hands that prayed without account, of lips that murmured the Hail Mary when silence was the only protection. This page runs this story from the 16th century to the present day, always distinguishing what is documented from what belongs to the oral tradition.

1. From Lepanto to Fujian: the arrival of the Rosary in China

On October 7, 1571, in the Gulf of Lepanto, the Christian fleet of the Holy League defeated the Ottoman army in a battle that changed the balance of the Mediterranean. Pope Saint Pius V had called on all Christianity to pray the rosary during the fight. When the news of victory came, the Pontiff attributed the triumph to the intercession of the Virgin of the Rosary. Throughout Europe, the rosary was founded, chapels were built, and the Dominican friars - custodians of this devotion since San Domingo de Guzmán received it in the 13th century - undertook new missions.

Sixteen years after Lepanto, in 1587, it was founded in Manila Province of the Most Holy Rosarythe Dominican branch for the evangelization of the Far East. It was from that Philippine province that Spanish Dominicans crossed the China Sea and set foot in the province of FujianSouth-east Chinese.

The first non-Jesuit missionaries in China arrived around 1630: the Dominican Fra. Angelo Cocchi and his fellow Fra. Juan Bautista de Morales, next to the Franciscan Antonio de Santa María Caballero. They settled in southern Fujian, opposite Taiwan, attending to a small Christian community that the Jesuits had previously evangelized. From the beginning, devotion to the rosary was the heart of his catechesis: the beads of the rosary - in Chinese, méigui jeng (玫瑰经), literalmente «la escritura de la rosa»— se convirtieron en el primer objeto sagrado que los catecúmenos chinos aprendían a usar.

The chase didn't take long. Between 1664 and 1671, all Chinese missionaries were detained in Canton. Ten Dominicans were among the confined. But the seed of the rosary had already germinated: Fujian communities continued to pray in secret, memorizing the prayers from generation to generation.

2. Father François Noël and the documented Marian devotion of the 18th century

As the Dominicans evangelized the south, the Jesuits did so in the great imperial cities. Among them was the P. François Noël (Gerpinnes, Valonia, 18 August 1651 - 17 September 1729), original flamenco, one of the most learned Jesuits of the Chinese mission.

Noël landed in Macao on 9 August 1685 and was fully integrated into the Chinese mission in September 1687. He began his apostolic work on the island of Chongming - in the Yangtsé estuary near Shanghai - in October 1688. In his first report, dated August 1689, he reported 120 baptisms: a living and growing community in just ten months.

Noël became a scholar of Chinese classic texts, publishing in 1711 the first complete Latin translation of China's four classic books (Philosophia Sinica). But he did not forget his Marian vocation: among his published works are the Epistolae Marianae (Marian Letters), where he documented the forms of devotion to the Virgin he observed in the different Chinese provinces and described how the Chinese faithful integrated Marian piety with elements of their own culture. Noël was also active in the controversy of the Chinese Rites, defending the possibility that the converts would maintain certain ancestral rites, although opposing the incorporation of confusing elements in the Catholic liturgy itself.

3. The miracle of Donglu (1900): The Virgin in the Boxer Rebellion

En la primavera del año 1900, una oleada de violencia antiextranjera y anticristiana se extendió por China como un incendio. Los «Bóxers» —miembros de la sociedad secreta Yìhéquán, «Puño de Justicia y Armonía»— atacaban misiones, quemaban iglesias y asesinaban a católicos chinos y misioneros extranjeros por igual. El Gobierno imperial de la emperatriz viuda Cixi apoyó en secreto el levantamiento.

In April 1900, a column of ten thousand Boxers headed towards the village of Donglüin the province of Hebei. It was a town founded decades ago by Vincentian missionaries, inhabited by 800 Catholics Chinese. The attackers expected an easy conquest: they were armed, they were overwhelmingly superior in number, and the village lacked walls or military defenses.

The Catholics of Donglü resisted. Four times they loaded the Boxers and four times they were repelled. The parish priest of the village, Father Wu (Vincentian missionary), gathered his parishioners in the church and led them in prayer before the image of the Virgin Mary. He asked for intercession. And then - according to the testimonies of the survivors collected by the Vincentian missionaries in the following weeks - something happened that no one could explain otherwise.

In the sky over Donglü appeared a woman's luminous figure dressed in whitesurrounded by glow. The Boxers, instead of giving up, shot into the sky with fury. But the vision didn't fade. And then a Fire rider - identified by the faithful with the Archangel San Miguel - which he carried to the attacking ranks. The entire column fled in debandade and did not attack Donglü again.

Father Wu ordered to paint an image of the Virgin Mary dressed in the imperial clothes of a Chinese empress - a deeply symbolic gesture at a time when Empress Cixi had declared war on foreigners - with the Child Jesus in the lap. This image became the iconic Our Lady of Donglu, also known as Our Lady of China o Mary Queen of China.

• 1900, April Boxer attack on Donglü, Hebei. Marian apparition and flight from the attackers. Testimony collected by the Vincentian missionaries.
• 1924 El Concilio de Shanghái consagra China a la Virgen bajo el título de «Nuestra Señora de China, Reina del Pueblo Chino».
• 1928 Pope Pius XI officially promulgates the image of Our Lady of China.
• 1932 Pius XI approves the Donglu Sanctuary as an official Marian sanctuary. later destroyed by Japanese bombs during World War II.
• 1995, 23 May Second apparition in Donglu, witnessed by more than 30,000 pilgrims. The sun turned from left to right for about twenty minutes, according to the testimonies collected by the bishop of Baoding. Phenomenum certified by the diocesan bishop.

4. Cardinal Gong Pinmei's Rosary: 30 years praying with his fingers

If Donglu's apparition is the great outer prodigy of the 20th century Chinese Marian devotion, the Cardinal Ignatius if Pin-Mei (in Mandarin: Gong Pinmei) represents the inner miracle: that of faith that survives decades of isolation and persecution.

Born in Shanghai in 1901 in a Catholic family with at least five generations of faith, Kung was ordained a priest in 1930 and consecrated Bishop of Shanghai on 7 October 1949 - the same day as the feast of the Rosary - and raised to Archbishop in July 1950. From the beginning of his episcopate he refused to break up with the Holy See and submit the diocese to the control of the Communist Party through the newly created China Catholic Patriotic Association.

In 1952 - the Marian Year in Shanghai - Bishop Kung organized a continuous rosary recitation for 24 hours a daybefore the image of Our Lady of Fatima who was pilgrimaging all the parishes of the diocese. He personally directed the rosary in the church of Christ the King as hundreds of armed police looked from the outside. It was an act of devotion and, at the same time, of peaceful resistance.

On September 8, 1955 - the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary - the Communist Party security agents carried out a massive raid against the Catholic clergy of Shanghai. Bishop Kung was arrested without trial. In 1960, in a very summary trial, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He would be in prison, often in solitary confinement, almost Thirty-three years.

In the cell, without rosary, without books, without images, Kung found a way to maintain his Marian devotion: I prayed the rosary counting the tens with my fingers. There was no need for any object. The hands were enough. He also recited the complete Latin Mass in memory, mentally reviewing each of its parts.

Pope John Paul II appointed him Cardinal in pectore - in secret, without announcing it - in its first Consistory of 1979. He did so to protect the prisoner, whose situation was already precarious. The appointment was not made public until 1991, when Kung was released and left China in custody. He died on March 12, 2000 in Stamford, Connecticut, and was the oldest member of the College of Cardinals. I was 98.

«Todo lo que me sucedió fue por voluntad de Dios. Estoy agradecido.»
Cardinal Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei, after his release.

5. The reeducation fields (laogai) and devotion to the rosary

The Chinese prison system known as lagoai —»reforma mediante el trabajo»— funcionó como una red de campos de trabajo forzado en los que fueron internados centenares de miles de personas, entre ellas numerosos católicos que se negaban a renunciar a su fe o a subordinarse a la Asociación Patriótica. El objetivo declarado era la «reeducación» ideológica; la realidad era la destrucción sistemática de la identidad religiosa y personal del preso.

The testimonies of Catholics who went through the lagoai They repeatedly mention the rosary as a spiritual anchor in the midst of disorientation. Without books, without images and with any confiscated religious object, the prisoners resorted to what they had: their fingers, the memory, the bodies of their cellmates as human rosaries in which to count the tens. This use of daily objects as substitutes for rosary - corn grains, yarn knots, pebbles - appears in oral testimonies collected by organizations such as the Cardinal Kung Foundation and in press reports published in specialized Catholic press.

What is documented is the case of Cardinal Kung himself, who is the most solid and verified testimony of a Catholic political prisoner who maintained devotion to the rosary during decades of imprisonment. His example was and is a reference for the whole Church pursued in China.

6. The apparition of 1995: the solar miracle of Donglu

On 23 May 1995, more than treinta mil peregrinos they had gathered in Donglu for the annual pilgrimage of May. Among them were faithful of the clandestine Church (faithful to Rome) and of the Patriotic Association (approved by the State). It was a moment of political tension, as the Chinese Government had been trying to control the sanctuary for years.

The testimonies of those present, collected by journalists and missionaries, describe a phenomenon similar to that which occurred in Fatima in October 1917: the sun began to turn from left to right and to emit flashes of colors for approximately 20 minutes. The Bishop of Baoding, Monsignor An Shuxin - a clandestine bishop, faithful to Rome - certified the phenomenon and communicated it to the Holy See. Days later, the Chinese authorities closed the sanctuary and arrested several faithful and priests.

The Donglu shrine remains today in a state of tension between the civil authorities and the faithful: the Communist Party installed in the compound a copy of the image approved by the Patriotic Association, while the clandestine community venerated the original image associated with the miracle of 1900.

7. Rosary as a language of resistance

Over more than four centuries, the rosary has worked in China as more than a prayer: it has been a language of resistance, a code that the faithful recognized among themselves in times of persecution. The Dominican missionaries introduced him to Fujian in the 17th century. The 1900 martyrs prayed to him before he died. Cardinal Kung prayed with his fingers in his isolation cell. The clandestine faithful of the 20th century learned it by memory because the books were prohibited.

The Chinese Marian tradition is not a foreign import that survived by inertia. It is a tradition that generation after generation was freely chosen, often at a huge cost, by millions of people who found in the Hail Mary -What are you doing?- the summary of his faith and the most intimate expression of his hope.

Pray the Hail Mary in Mandarin Chinese