{"id":6260,"date":"2005-06-24T09:56:55","date_gmt":"2005-06-24T09:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/story-of-an-underground-priest.html"},"modified":"2005-06-24T09:56:55","modified_gmt":"2005-06-24T09:56:55","slug":"story-of-an-underground-priest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/story-of-an-underground-priest.html","title":{"rendered":"Story of an Underground Priest"},"content":{"rendered":"

In China, via AsiaNews<\/a><\/p>\n

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I spent 5 years in the seminary of the underground Church.  Life was very difficult and very risky.  Wake-up time was 5 a.m.  After a half hour of meditation, we celebrated Mass and then Lauds.  After breakfast, we would clean up and then our studies would begin.  We would go to bed at 10 p.m.  Life in an underground seminary is a bit hard: we lived in a country house made available to us by a member of the faithful.  But when we got news that the police had discovered us, we were forced to flee and settle in another place.  In 5 years, we changed location 3 times.<\/p>\n

We seminarians had to take care of the cleaning, but also the cooking, preparing meals for everyone.  From the material standpoint, life was truly difficult: little food, few vegetables, hardly ever meat; crowded rooms with no extra space… But, in my heart, I felt peace and even an entirely new joy, different from what I previously felt.  There was a strong friendship and sense of brotherhood among the seminarians.  Difficulties were quickly overcome since everyone was ready to love each other.<\/p>\n

After 5 years of study, the day came for my priestly ordination.  There was a lot of tension at that time in my diocese and we risked being jailed by police.  Thus, we celebrated the ordination Mass at 4 o’clock in the morning: at that time everyone in China is asleep, even the policemen.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Do check out all of AsiaNews for a broader view of what’s going on in the world these days.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In China, via AsiaNews I spent 5 years in the seminary of the underground Church.  Life was very difficult and very risky.  Wake-up time was 5 a.m.  After a half hour of meditation, we celebrated Mass and then Lauds.  After breakfast, we would clean up and then our studies would begin.  We would go to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nStory of an Underground Priest - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/story-of-an-underground-priest.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Story of an Underground Priest - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}