Cardinal Shan Says His Illness Reveals New Horizons For Evangelization
Apr 25, 2008
Cardinal Paul Shan Kuo-hsi, suffering from lung cancer since mid-2006, says the "blessing" of his illness has opened many doors and enabled him to explain the Catholic faith to non-Christians "much more than I did in 60 years as a Jesuit."
ROME (UCAN, April 25, 2008) -- "It is a blessing," the former president of Taiwan's episcopal conference recently told UCA News in Rome, "because after the diagnosis of the illness, I said a prayer and then calmed down and thought: this is the special will of God for me; he wants to give me a final task for the last part of my life."
He soon learned what that is: "God wants me to give talks to people about the Christian faith, because many people are surprised that I am not afraid of death, and facing death I am still so calm. So they want to listen to me."
Since May 2007, he has given "more than 50 talks, each to an audience of more than 1,000 people." He has spoken in 14 universities, eight prisons, seven dioceses and many organizations across Taiwan. "Sometimes my talks are carried live on TV or radio, and reported by secular newspapers and magazines," he said.
During the last year, "I have explained our Catholic faith to non-Christians much more than I did in 60 years as a Jesuit because before my sickness I couldn't talk directly to the people about my faith as I didn't know whether they would listen or not," he pointed out. Now, he gets invited by the people themselves because "they want to listen, they want to know."
On Feb. 5, for example, more than 100 lung-cancer specialists invited him "because they were surprised I could live so long." He recalled that when "they asked, 'what means besides medicine do you use?' I replied, 'one that you haven't paid attention to - my faith!'"
He had a simple message during that three-hour discussion, he added. "My faith, Christianity, is very simple. Just one word, love, because God is love and the nature of God is immense love," he recalled telling them. He also explained that he is "not afraid of death, because I know that after death I will enjoy the eternal life of God, which is a life of immense love."
Nowadays, the cardinal explains "the essential points of our faith" to audiences of people who are 97 percent non-Christians, given that Catholics and Protestants account for only 3 percent of Taiwan's population. Many of them, he said, are hearing about the Christian faith for the first time.
Invitations keep arriving, he said, but "the shortage of time and the condition of my health" compel him to give priority to three categories: intellectuals like university scholars and doctors, imprisoned criminals, and religious groups, including Protestants, Buddhists, Taoists, and Catholics.
Cardinal Shan, now 84, was born in Puyang in northeastern Henan province. When he was 25, he left mainland China to join the Jesuits and study for the priesthood, just before the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong came to power in 1949. Since then, he was allowed to return once in 1979. Now in the evening of his life, he wishes to revisit the mainland, but this is still not possible.
Vatican officials have noted that while Beijing welcomes cardinals visiting from Belgium, France, Scotland, USA and Vietnam, it shows no such readiness to allow the world's two Chinese cardinals, Paul Shan Kuo-hsi and Hong Kong's Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, a Shanghai native, to visit the land of their birth.
Cardinal Shan, in Rome in March to attend a meeting of the Commission for the Church in China set up by Pope Benedict, expressed optimism about the future of the Church in the mainland, "because we are in the hands of God, and from history we know that no dictatorial regime will last forever."
"If we compare the actual government of Beijing (today) with the government of Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping, there is a big change, a big change," he said.
As for persecutions and trials over the years, he believes "God uses them to purify us." Despite everything, he concluded, "the number of Catholics has increased almost five times in over 50 years -- and that's a miracle!"
Cardinal Shan Says His Illness Reveals New Horizons For Evangelization