Archpriest Stefan Wu was killed on this day in 1970. On May 12, I wrote about the modern Chinese confessor of the Orthodox faith, Fr. Michael Li (d. 2016). Fr. Michael experienced the horrors of the Cultural Revolution when the state permitted brutal "reeducation" and execution of non-communist elements. However, unlike Fr. Stefan, who, like Fr. Michael, grew up in the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Peking, Fr. Michael died peacefully in Australia. The future Fr. Stephan was born on January 28, 1925. He had a theological education and served as a reader and cantor in the ROCOR's church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Hong Kong. On August 17, 1947, Stefan was ordained a deacon in St. Innocent's episcopal church, at that time of the Moscow Patriarchate in the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Peking. Then he was ordained a priest with attachment to the Dormition Cathedral of the Mission. Fr. Stefan was transferred to St. Alexis' church in Modyagou, Harbin. Thus Fr. Stefan became the last rector of the church (a Roman Catholic congregation now uses the church building). Fr. Stefan was arrested and spent years in prison. Towards the end of his earthly life, he was subjected to public mockery in front of his church. The Red Guardsmen placed a table in front of the church, on which sharp rubble was poured, and Archpriest Stefan was placed on his knees on the ruins. They dressed him in a jester's robe and put a cap filled with metal shavings on his head. His face was smeared with soot. For two days, they beat him on the head with a wooden hammer, hit him on the shoulders with steel sticks, and spat on the cross until, half dead, they took him to the prison hospital. After some medical treatment, Archpriest Stefan Wu was shot there in prison on May 17, 1970. |
