Seminarians, nuns need formation directors, say Chinese religious

By Barb Fraze


As Chinese Catholic seminaries and religious communities work to train a new generation of priests and nuns, many religious leaders say their greatest need is for people to learn religious formation -- how to accompany a candidate in religious life.

"We still have a great need for formation work," said Auxiliary Bishop Paul Pei Junmin of Shenyang, in northeastern China's Liaoning province. "We really do not have enough people for spiritual direction."

Sister Mary Pan Xiufang, a member of the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary who works in the Shanghai Diocese, said that when priests and nuns do not have good training it becomes a big circle -- the new people, in turn, do not train the others well.

"The formation part is very important," because all the priests and sisters are so young, she said.

Sister Mary entered her order in 1986 and did not receive much formation on "how to live properly a religious life," although, she added quickly, the older sisters did the best they could. As a novice, she said, she did not even have her own Bible, and the old nuns who had lived through the Cultural Revolution "taught us what they remembered."

From 1995 to 1997, Sister Mary lived with the Daughters of St. Paul in Boston and did some formation work with them in the novitiate. She said when she returned to China she redid her own formation and helped with her community.

In September 2001 she returned to the United States, where she studied international religious formation and leadership at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. She said there were 38 students from 22 countries in the international religious formation program, and all the cross-cultural exposure "also helped to kind of increase the knowledge of formation of myself." In addition, she said, she got some background in psychology, which was not readily available to her in China.

Bishop Pei spent the 10 years before his 2006 ordination as a bishop teaching at Liaoning regional seminary in Shenyang, where he also served as vice rector and dean of studies.

He said that when the Chinese government began loosening its religious restrictions in the 1980s seminarians' formation directors were elderly priests educated before the Second Vatican Council. As the church began re-emerging, he said, young priests -- including himself, who as a priest earned degrees from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa. -- initially studied the Bible or theology.

"We could teach the courses, but we (did) not know how to train the seminarians," especially spiritually, he said.


Formation directors from places like Hong Kong or Macau "may not know how to train those seminarians," because of the special circumstances in China, he said, referring to government restrictions under which Chinese Catholics operate.

Students hit the books at the Sheshan regional seminary in Shanghai. (CNS/Nancy Wiechec)