Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei (; 2 August 1901 – 12 March 2000) was a Chinese Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Shanghai from 1950 until his death in 2000. He spent 30 years in prison for defying attempts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to control Catholics in the country through the government-approved Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. At the time of his death in exile in the United States, he was the oldest member of the College of Cardinals, to which he was secretly appointed by Pope John Paul II in 1979.

Biography

Kung was born in 1901 into a Shanghai family with Catholic roots spreading back at least five generations. He would become a priest in 1930, Bishop of Souchou in October 1949 just after Mao Zedong drove Chiang Kai-Shek to Taiwan, and Archbishop of Shanghai on 15 July, 1950. As Archbishop during the first half of the 1950s, Kung alongside Guangzhou's Dominic Deng Yiming refused to renounce the Vatican despite the demands of and threats by Mao, to whose regime religious martyrdom had already become an embarrassment, since liturgical services became sites of anti-communist demonstration.

On September 8, 1955, Kung, along with other Catholic clerics laity, was arrested and imprisoned as the "Kung Pin-mei counterrevolutionary clique". and replaced by Louis Zhang Jiashu, who was not approved by the Pope. When replaced by Zhang, Kung was found guilty in a public trial of

In 1979, Kung appealed his sentence.

Kung was released from prison per article 73 of the penal code, which stated that people with life sentences could be rehabilitated if they had served at least ten years of their sentence and had demonstrated repentance. Ignatius left China for medical treatment and settled in the United States. According to academic Paul P. Mariani, statements by Kung after this point were likely filtered by Kung's nephew. His titular church was the old basilica of St. Sixtus.

References

  • Cardinal Kung Pin Mei Foundation, website
  • Cardinal Kung Academy, website
  • Profile on Catholic hierarchy Wikipedia:SPS|
  • Cardinal Wung on First Things