By Mary Ellen Manz, M.M.

On Dec. 13, 1951, after a year and a half of house arrest, Sisters Edith Rietz and Paulita Hoffmann crossed the border from mainland China into freedom and the welcoming arms of their Sisters in Hong Kong.

When Sister Paulita Hoffmann arrived in China in 1938, there were already Maryknoll Fathers, Brothers and Sisters to welcome their colleagues and help them get started in their new home. Of course, China was excitingly different and quite a challenge. In the novitiate at Maryknoll, the Sisters were taught that their basic virtue had to be humility, and how true that was, says Hoffmann. Years would be spent studying the culture and language of their new land, hour after hour of memorizing not only vocabulary but also the tones that could totally change the meaning of what one wanted to say. But perseverance paid off and Hoffmann became fluent in the language of her adopted people.

Maryknoll Father Francis X. Ford was the Prefect of Kaying and his idea of how the Sisters were to be in mission was based on how Jesus sent his disciples out in twos to preach the Good News. With the approval of Mother Mary Joseph, the superior of the Maryknoll Sisters, Ford sent the Sisters out to live in rural areas, two by two, to evangelize the women. Sister Hoffmann recalls, "He told us very emphatically, 'Schools and orphanages, the Christians will later build; you are here to bring them the gift of faith and teach the Christian doctrine.' "

Today, the petite, 98-year-old Sister from Cincinnati, Ohio, recalls with a chuckle, "The only rub was that we were so new at Mandarin and the rural women had their own local dialect called tu tam, that is, 'earth language,' that we really had our work cut out for us. We had to learn the language of the women! So, every morning, in my second year I went out with one of our Sisters who already knew some Chinese, stopping to greet the women at their chores, asking them to tell us what they were doing and carefully copying into our notebooks what we heard. Then when we arrived home, two or three days a week we gave the new words, phrases and sentences to two of our Sisters who were collecting them and rewriting them in a book. After four or five years, they had a complete course of 18 books!"

In those days there was no such thing as a computer, no copier, no tape recorder—just an old typewriter to transcribe the lessons, which were sent to Hong Kong and laboriously reproduced on gelatin pads, making about 40 copies of a page at a time. These were then returned and used for the Christian doctrine classes to teach the women in their own dialect. "A slow tedious process, but we did it!" Sister Hoffmann says.

"Bishop Ford stressed that this was the land of the Chinese people and their Church," she explains. "We were foreigners. They would always be here, so as soon as the faith was established, the people would become the priests and the Sisters. We were to aid them in starting novitiates and seminaries for them to take over their Church as soon as they could."

The years moved on and Hoffmann became an expert in the language. Chinese seminarians became priests and young women joined communities of Sisters, whose early formation was aided by Maryknoll Sister Therese Grondin.

During the Communist Revolution in 1947, things became much more difficult for the Christians and the missionaries. Sisters Hoffmann and Edith Rietz were living in the village of Hingning. They were abused and accused of being spies and eventually placed under house arrest. Chinese Catholics were accused of being "helpers of the Americans."

Hoffmann testifies to the fidelity of the Sisters' Chinese friends, who at times were able to smuggle the Blessed Sacrament in from other villages: "Under interrogation, our house girls were asked how much the foreign women paid them. The girls, without batting an eye, named a salary equal to that of a high school teacher. Later, when I asked why they had given a wrong amount, they said, 'Sister, when we were sick, you gave us medicine; you teach us; you sometimes give us gifts for our families. All these things we just counted in.' " Christians were coerced to concoct stories of crimes to convict the Sisters, but even in danger of harsh treatment and imprisonment themselves, the people would not lie.

Eventually the church in Hingning was made into a prison, the wooden crucifix was pulled down and chopped into firewood to cook the soldiers' food. A scaffold was put up in the sanctuary and used to torture anyone who resisted the new regime, the cries of whom the Sisters could hear in their room next door. Cursed, spat upon, spattered with filth, their veils torn off them—all had to be endured with patience by the two missionaries. One day Hoffmann and Rietz were led to the village ballfield, where they witnessed the mock trial of their pastor, Father Aloysius Ao. He was condemned to prison and hard labor and led away.

Recalling the Sisters' last glance of their beloved Father Ao, Hoffmann says, "Three guards stood in corners with their guns trained on him ... we spoke very loudly, hoping he would hear us. He did ... then he made a large gesture in the air, as if brushing a fly away. It was a huge Sign of the Cross. After that, he gave us a broad wink ... we never saw him again. We learned later that he died in prison after a trial in Canton."

On Dec. 13, 1951, the two missionaries were expelled from China, but because of the vision of Bishop Ford, the Church in China lives on in its people. Hoffmann was reassigned to Taiwan in 1954, where she remained in direct evangelization until 2004. Then she returned to the Maryknoll Sisters Center in New York, where she resides and continues to be in service to the Lord in any way she can. Meanwhile, other Maryknoll Sisters continue to evangelize, often going out two by two to carry the Gospel message to the ends of the earth.

For information about the Maryknoll Sisters visit www.mklsisters.org