PART 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z5IXK6iWtQ PART 2:...(More)

PART 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z5IXK6iWtQ PART 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCGbifOdgUc PART 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP-ysKLUkpM PART 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s3s7OB2BTk PART 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hybNFbjr2Q PART 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MS1-gUkGrM One Priest in the Underground Catholic Church in China By Theresa Marie Moreau "Chu lai! Chu lai!" Guang-Zhong Gu awoke in the pre-dawn hours, bathed in the sweat of a balmy Shanghai September. Unfamiliar voices barked, "Come out! Come out!" Lights overhead flashed on. The cold steel snap of ammo clicked into machine guns. Fists pounded at the doors lining the long corridors of the Xujiahui Seminary, normally bustling with the quiet sweep of long, black robes. Gu, a 23-year-old third-year seminary student, leapt out of bed. Already dressed in shorts and a shirt, he stuffed his feet into a pair of shoes. No time for socks. He stumbled through the door without looking back. He'd never see the room again. "Sit! Head down! No looking up!" shouted a plainclothes officer from the Xujiahui district police station. With arms waving and fingers pointing, they rounded up more than 150 seminarians and half-a-dozen Jesuit priests, the teachers. Although asleep only moments before, all the men were wide awake as they took their seats. It was the early morning hours of September 8, 1955. Fifty years ago—the date remembered, commemorated, penciled-in, and cursed as the day that the authoritarian, totalitarian Communists waited for the dark hours to arrest hundreds of boys and girls, men and women, laity and clergy. They were criminals. They were Roman Catholics. Officers led Gu, under arrest and in handcuffs, outside and pushed him onto one of the trucks normally used to transport coal. Still night, Gu saw nothing as he squatted down. Though there were other seminarians beside him, they were invisible in the dark. The truck lurched forward, and Gu and the others swayed with the motion. Only the roar of the engine, the grinding of the gears, and the crunch of the tires over the gravel in the road filled Gu's ears. No one spoke. The ride in the truck lasted ten minutes. A foot slammed down the brake pedal. It was the end of the road for him: Xujiahui district police station. For six months, Gu sat and waited in a cell. No court, no judge, no trial. Just waiting. His crime? Now 72, Gu (which he has Westernized to Koo since coming to America) sits straight up in his office chair in the rectory of St. Leo the Great Church in San Jose, California. Eyes forward, he raises his index finger and points to an imaginary criminal in front of him. His voice takes on a tone of authority. He stabs the air with the finger as he recounts each charge—as though he's back in prison again. "The first charge is: Guang-Zhong Gu never recognized himself as counter-revolutionary! "The second is: Guang-Zhong Gu joined the counter-revolutionary organization, the Legion of Mary, and resisted to resign! "The third is: Guang-Zhong Gu never recognized Bishop Kung as counter-revolutionary! "And Guang-Zhong Gu never recognized the Legion of Mary as counter-revolutionary organization! "My four crimes," Gu says, smiling, shaking his head. "My real crime? I joined the Legion of Mary." The formation of Legion of Mary chapters began in 1948, when the Rev. W. Aedan McGrath, an Irish missionary of the Society of St. Columban with a chapel in Shanghai, established the Catholic youth organization in several cities throughout China. Months later, with the end of the three-year Chinese civil war that followed in the wake of World War II, the Communists defeated the ruling government and took over the country... ...After 24 years at Wayuxiangka penal farm, he rode off and made his way to the Gung He Second Middle School in Qinghai province, where he had earlier met the headmaster in secret, waiting for an opportunity to escape. Finally, after decades of imprisonment, he succeeded. For the next four years, Gu taught English at the school during the day and—still faithful to his vocation—studied theology at night. His textbooks consisted of two books Bishop Fan had given him earlier. In February 1988, Gu visited Fan, who lived in a small room in the second story of his niece's home in a Shanghai suburb. "I want to be ordained," Gu told him. "If it's God's will, everything will be fulfilled," Fan assured him. Days later, on February 22, Fan ordained Guang-Zhong Gu. "I was so happy. I rode my bicycle back home, and I think, I don't belong to this world. Everything was foreseen," Gu says. . ENDNOTE: All Chinese names have been written in a manner to avoid confusion and to remain consistent with the English standard of writing proper names: given name first, family name last. In Chinese, names are traditionally written with family name first, given name last.(Less)