Dear Editor: Thank you for your column on Bishop Francis X. Ford, M.M., (June 6).
For some reason as I read the piece I thought “not only does a tree grow in Brooklyn, but a saint, too.”
I am sure that there are many, myself included, who know well who F.X. Ford was, as there are also many who know that Sister Ita Ford, M.M., was his niece. Each is a martyr for the love of Christ and for his people.
Brother Damian Novello, O.S.F., the founder of campus ministry at Bishop Ford C.C.H.S., structured the sophomore retreat around the theme “Bishop Ford as a role model.”
To prepare the 30 juniors in the program for that retreat, the first day of the school year would be spent at the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Retreat Center, Ossining, N.Y.
In the Spring, 2009, we received word via the Maryknoll Magazine that Sister Paulita Hoffman, M.M., was then living in the Maryknoll Convent. Sister Paulita had served with the bishop in China. The following fall, the campus ministers planned to meet her in the convent on their training day. Unfortunately, on the appointed day she was ill.
During Advent 2011, Frank Brancato, principal; Chris Gando, language teacher–videographer; and I went to Maryknoll to interview both Sister Paulita and Sister Julia Hannigan. Each had served with him in China.
What surprised us was that the day we arrived was the actual 60th anniversary of the release of Sister Julia from Communist detention.
Both Sister Julia and Bishop Ford were held in the same compound under house arrest initially, although in separate buildings. In the interview, she stated that she was illegally on the convent roof when both Bishop Ford and his secretary, Sister Joan Marie Ryan, were led away, manacled, to prison.
Each sister was clear and articulate in describing his love of the Chinese people, his God and the Church. “Bishop Ford was everything to us,” said Sister Julia. His evangelizing method was to send sisters in pairs to villages, for several weeks at a time. There, they learned the languages and made friends with the women. From those encounters, a catechism was written using the dialects of the local people. It was his goal to build a Church that belonged to the Chinese people, and was not seen as a foreign institution.
Sister Joan Marie was the last American to see him living. Peering through a crack in a wall she saw that a prison guard carried the bishop “like a sack of rice” over his shoulder. He passed away soon afterwards. Upon her release, she was informed of his death, and she was adamant in insisting that she be shown his grave before leaving the prison compound. (The Maryknoll Sisters have a copy of the photo of his burial place in their archives.)
In the hearts of many people, Francis Xavier Ford, M.M., is indeed a saint.
BROTHER THOMAS BARTON, O.S.F.
Brooklyn
My father’s sister, Sister Joan Marie, my Aunt Mary. She never spoke of her imprisonment in China but always shared her love for the Chinese people. I would love to read more stories from their missions and time in China.
My father wrote a book you may be interested in. It is entitled “ a frog out a deep well” by Li Ren
A lot of the book details how the missionaries helped him in the 1940s and 1950s and Bishop Ford is mentoned in the book as well as many other Maryknollers.
My father, James Ronaghan, was Sister Joan Marie Ryan’s first cousin. She visited our family in 1967 in Colorado, and late one evening sat with us and recounted the story of her captivity and that of Bishop Ford. My greatest disappointment in life has been the failure of the Catholic Church to recognize their significant sacrifices on behalf of Mother Church. Their suffering is too graphic to relate here, and I pray for them everyday, that they are at peace in the arms of Jesus and Mary.