Fr Alphonse L’Heureux, a Trappist monk living in China, was tortured to death by Chinese soldiers from the Marxist side of the civil war in 1947. The monk’s death is almost too shocking too tell here, but one testimony stays: a soldier is said to have remarked that Fr L’Heureux’s serene expression made him look like “the man on the cross in the abbey church”.
In the last century, Chinese Catholicism has often been an imitation of Christ, and many heroes of the faith have ended up looking like the man on the Cross. Scholars such as Anthony Clark – who I got the story above from – have done remarkable work to bring these figures to light.
