The China Mission Episode 3 - War - 1940s
From 1920 to 1954, hundreds of Irish men and women served as Roman Catholic missionaries in China. They worked in social and pastoral services. It is an extraordinary story of cultural interaction, and heroism in the face of natural disaster and political danger. The communists won the civil war in 1949 and it meant there was no future for the Irish missionary priests and sisters in China. Mao Zedong declared war on religion and persecuted foreigners in particular. Irish missionaries were arrested and imprisoned in cruel conditions.