The new Matteo Ricci Cultural Exchange Exhibition Center details the life of the Jesuit priest, known as Li Madou to Chinese people, through an array of exhibits and written accounts.

The center is located near the ruins of the first church and Jesuit house that Fr. Ricci and his companion Jesuit Father Michele Ruggieri were allowed to build after they arrived in China in 1583. The church, called “Xianhua Temple” out of respect for Buddhist custom, was dedicated to the Blessed Mother.

Jesuit Father Gabriel Li Jiafang of Jiangmen, who attended the opening, hoped the exhibition, which is designed to boost tourism, would make more people aware of the missionary and the Catholic faith.

“The local Church has provided historical material such as books  and written records for the Ricci exhibition center which is managed by the  city museum. A replica of a Ricci statue owned by the parish is also erected there,” the pastor of Zhaoqing’s Immaculate Conception Church said.

Other exhibits include Fr. Ricci’s writings, items of clothing, scientific instruments and astronomical data, to help visitors understand his background, his six years in Zhaoqing (until 1589) and his contribution to cultural exchanges between East and West.

Waiting for him were his brothers, Walter, Alex, Robert and their families, including Walter’s 10-year-old daughter, Mary Jo, who would later chronicle the dramatic story that linked her father and uncle, a story documented in hundreds of letters written by the two men over more than 50 years.

The letters illustrate the history of China, from the Japanese occupation in World War II to the Communist takeover; they also reveal the devotion of brothers, a connection that endured despite distance and deprivation.

Aug. 2, 1952 – From Charles to Walter: Today is my 23rd anniversary as a Jesuit. It doesn’t seem that long since the family was all together. We certainly had some good times and lots of fun around the table. Dad was especially encouraging when I raised the vocation question with him, and he talked Mom out of the idea I was too young. The trip to Los Gatos was a step light-hearted enough for me, but I’m sure Mom and Dad felt deeply the first splintering of the family. Fortunately, though, there’s never been any real separation of our hearts.

In 1941, Charles sailed for Peking, where he studied Chinese for two years before the Japanese placed him and 29 colleagues under house arrest in Shanghai until the end of World War II. “He was able to send me letters via the Red Cross,” said Walter.

Upon his release, Charles taught theology in Shanghai until July 1946, when he returned to the U.S. to study journalism at Marquette University. He moved back to Shanghai in 1949, where he was appointed the superior of the Jesuit School of Theology in Shanghai, making him the highest-ranking American Jesuit in the Shanghai Jesuit Mission. He worked with Jesuit scholastics until his arrest by the Communists in 1953, when he was led away from his room at gunpoint, accused of “ideological sabotage” for giving harmful guidance to his students.

Dec. 1, 1950 – From Charles to his Jesuit superiors: Under present circumstances, the laity have a more than usually large part to fulfill in keeping the flame of faith and joy of Catholic life aglow in the hearts of Catholic families. Sometimes the Blessed Sacrament is brought from the mission centers to families in the countryside by devout lay people. The religious instruction of children has to be done in small groups, often by parents or zealous lay folk. The practice of gathering together for night prayers and the rosary is encouraged in the many places where priests cannot visit. In the cities, more intense study and exercise of the faith is necessary to counteract the torrent of atheistic propaganda, which official outlets pour out on us.

He spent the next four years being moved from one prison to the next – five in all. He shared one of those cells with 15 prisoners, all of whom had to take turns lying down to sleep. His third cell, which he shared with five others, was five and a half feet by eight feet. “We couldn’t stretch out full length at night, but were jammed head to toe, so that if one man moved, we all woke up,” Charles wrote in 1960 about his ordeal.

He was given so little to eat, including one ounce of meat once a week, that the six-foot-tall priest weighed only 107 pounds by the time he was released. He endured lengthy interrogations, sometimes seven hours at a stretch. “The real anguish was how they tried to use you to destroy your own worth, to accuse yourself of crimes you had not done.”

During his years in prison, the State Department and the Society of Jesus worked to earn release for him and his brother Jesuits. In 1955, they struck a deal with the Communist Party, but it wasn’t until June 15, 1957, that Charles finally left prison. “They said my attitude wasn’t positive,” he noted in a 1979 interview.

He returned to the U.S. by ship to give him time to recuperate. When he arrived in the Bay Area, he was greeted by all the McCarthy families and by reporters ready to tell his story to a public eager for news from the heart of the Cold War. He spent the next two years at the Los Gatos seminary as spiritual director, regaining his health and working with Jesuit novices.

Despite his more than six years as a captive of both the Japanese and Communists in China, Fr. McCarthy chose to return to Asia in 1959, this time to the Philippines where he worked with Jesuit seminarians. He stayed in the Philippines until his death in 1991.

For more on Fr. McCarthy’s amazing story be sure to check out “Church Militant: Bishop Kung and Catholic Resistance in Communist Shanghai” by Jesuit Father Paul Mariani.

To read more of Fr. McCarthy’s letters, check out the full version of this article which originally appeared in Genesis, the Alumni Quarterly of St. Ignatius College Prep in San Francisco. To download the full article and magazine, please click here.

Jesuit Father Jeremy Clarke with items featured in the Boston College exhibit "Binding Friendship: Ricci, China and Jesuit Cultural Learnings." (Photo by Gary Wayne Gilbert)

Boston College Assistant Professor of History Jesuit Father Jeremy Clarke helped his undgergrad students create an exhibit that opened on Mar. 21 titled “Binding Friendship: Ricci, China and Jesuit Cultural Learnings.”

The exhibit, which highlights the history of East-West exchanges, has a number of multimedia resources to demonstrate Christian mission history in Asia.

In the 16th century, the Chinese were utilizing what at the time was advanced technology through their observatory in Beijing, Fr. Clarke said.

“In one display, we show the observatory and all the astronomical devices that they used during the time the Jesuits were there,” said student Alexander Gilman ’11.

Utilizing excerpts and outtakes from Clarke’s documentary, “Beyond Ricci: Celebrating 400 Years of the Chinese Catholic Church,” students were able to compile their own virtual history.

“One of the ways people learned about East-West cultural exchange was through six melody lines written down by a Jesuit in Beijing at that time,” said Clarke. Using these melodies as a creative point of departure, Clarke commissioned the composition of an aria that is played as people pass through the exhibit.

A number of rare books are also on display, including Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, the translations of the first three of the four canonical books of Confucianism. A group of Jesuits originally translated the philosophies of the Chinese to lead to greater understanding of Chinese thought and brought the culture to Europeans and beyond, Clarke said.

For more information, watch a video preview of the exhibit and visit the Boston College Chronicle.

Jesuit Father Jeremy Clarke with items featured in the Boston College exhibit "Binding Friendship: Ricci, China and Jesuit Cultural Learnings." (Photo by Gary Wayne Gilbert)

Boston College Assistant Professor of History Jesuit Father Jeremy Clarke helped his undgergrad students create an exhibit that opened on Mar. 21 titled “Binding Friendship: Ricci, China and Jesuit Cultural Learnings.”

The exhibit, which highlights the history of East-West exchanges, has a number of multimedia resources to demonstrate Christian mission history in Asia.

In the 16th century, the Chinese were utilizing what at the time was advanced technology through their observatory in Beijing, Fr. Clarke said.

“In one display, we show the observatory and all the astronomical devices that they used during the time the Jesuits were there,” said student Alexander Gilman ’11.

Utilizing excerpts and outtakes from Clarke’s documentary, “Beyond Ricci: Celebrating 400 Years of the Chinese Catholic Church,” students were able to compile their own virtual history.

“One of the ways people learned about East-West cultural exchange was through six melody lines written down by a Jesuit in Beijing at that time,” said Clarke. Using these melodies as a creative point of departure, Clarke commissioned the composition of an aria that is played as people pass through the exhibit.

A number of rare books are also on display, including Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, the translations of the first three of the four canonical books of Confucianism. A group of Jesuits originally translated the philosophies of the Chinese to lead to greater understanding of Chinese thought and brought the culture to Europeans and beyond, Clarke said.

For more information, watch a video preview of the exhibit and visit the Boston College Chronicle.

Jesuit Father Tom Neitzke, recently ordained in June, spent a summer two years ago in China working at a leprosarium. The journey to the remote Chinese village to stay among those suffering with leprosy and to understand their subsequent shunning by their community, Fr. Neitzke understood that there is much to learn from those among us who have the least. His reflections on the experience of being in China are below.

In the summer of 2008 I went to China with a group of Jesuits to learn about and experience Chinese history and culture. After spending a few weeks in Beijing, three of us were sent to a remote village in southwestern China to live and work with a community of lepers. As I prepared for the trip I was both excited and frightened as I had no idea what to expect.

I had never seen anyone with leprosy, and I had only heard about it from stories in the gospels or from the work of Mother Teresa. In the days before I left, I looked up Hansen’s Disease, as it is officially called, and read that I would not contract leprosy if I washed my hands, as it is spread in a similar way as the common cold. With that news I immediately put myself in charge of bringing the hand sanitizer.

As the group left Beijing and we began our long journey through mountainous and muddy roads I thought of all the ways to keep my hands in my pockets and avoid touching anyone at all costs, and I had sanitizer ready to go when needed. I was set! But if I have learned anything in my eleven years of formation it is that the best made plans usually fall apart and that God has a sense of humor!

As soon as we arrived at the leprosarium an elderly man, seeing me from a distance, walked out of the gate and grinning from ear to ear reached out his hand—a hand that was missing fingers and scarred and twisted from leprosy—with a joy in his eyes that I have rarely seen. Instinctively I reached out my hand and as we exchanged greetings in my limited Chinese I forgot about all the sprays, gels, and wipes, and experienced the touch of a man who would later tell us that he had been forced out of his village and shunned from his wife and children who he had not seen in thirty years. This man—a father, a brother, a son, and soon to be my new friend—left an incredible impression on me.

The people that lived at that leprosarium were not allowed to touch other people; society had taught them to stay far away from others and to avoid human contact. They were reminded of this daily as they went to get supplies and the nearby village children would throw stones at them as they walked down the road. This group of people had been taught never to approach or touch another human being, but for some reason when they saw us the first thing they did was reach out and embrace us.

It was during my time in China that my vocation as a Jesuit priest deepened, and I understood the call to go to the frontiers to help reconcile the world to Christ and especially to those who struggle the most in our fragmented world. This call for me, as a Jesuit priest, is to imitate Christ as one who is both pilgrim and laborer, and also as one who is missioned to be with people in order to share the light of the Gospel with them. I am humbled by the love and care that I have received by so many along the way, and I was fortunate enough to have someone show me how to imitate Christ in the man I met in China. In that moment, without him even knowing it, he exemplified the true meaning of priesthood and of Christ’s love by reaching out with affection and without fear in order to embrace my shaky and over-sanitized hand.

Father Ricci’s first publication in classical Chinese was a treatise On Friendship in 1595. His methodology was to inculturate Christianity through respect for local culture and the formation of personal relationships.

The California Province is reviewing the Malatesta Program this week with a hope to continue such person-to-person exchange. The program’s objective is to promote academic collaboration in the area of theology and allied disciplines through exchanges between faculty and graduate students at three California Jesuit universities and those at selected Chinese universities.

It seeks in particular to support the development of religious studies programs in China and to enhance the state of theological investigation there and at the California Jesuit universities.

The idea began in the 2006-07 academic year after two faculty members from the Jesuit School of Theology were invited to lecture in China, where they met faculty from some prestigious mainland universities who expressed enthusiasm for academic exchanges.

The program was named after Jesuit Father Edward Malatesta, a biblical scholar who died in Hong Kong in 1998. He was one of the first priests from outside China to teach at Sheshan Seminary in Shanghai in 1989 and had contributed 20,000 books to the seminary’s library.

The California province’s involvement in China began in 1928 when Pope Pius XI requested the Jesuit society to provide men for the China mission.

The Malatesta Program is administered by a committee that includes two faculty members each from the Loyola Marymount University, Santa Clara University and the University of San Francisco (USF). Its office is located at the USF’s Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, co-founded by Father Malatesta and the California province in 1984.