User:Acather96/Cosma Shi Enxiang

Bishop Cosma Shi Enxiang (1921-2015) was a Roman Catholic priest and later bishop for the apostolic prefecture of Yixian who, due to his loyalty to the Holy See instead of the People's Republic of China's Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), was imprisoned by the Chinese government. Incarcerated and re-released several times since 1954, Bishop Shi spent forty years in prison and on 30th January 2015 his family were informed by the Baoding city government that he had died in prison.

Born in February 1921, Shi was ordained a priest on 1947. Two years later in 1949, the communists gained power over all of mainland China and established the CPCA, a state association which exercises control over mainland Chinese Catholics and rejects the authority of the Vatican, most notably by ordaining its own bishops independent of papal authority and suppressing Church teaching on issues such as abortion and female genital mutilation. Shi was first arrested in 1954, and was imprisoned (during which he mostly completed hard labour, first at a camp in Heilongjiang province and later at coal mines ine was clandestinely consecrated Auxiliary Bishop of Yixian in 1982. He was later made the Prefect Apostolic of Yixian (the ordina [[Shanxi province) for during long periods in between 1957-1980. Rearrested in 1981 after restarting his ministry in Hebei, hry]] of Yixian ) after the previous bishop, Bishop Liu Guandong retired.

Notes and references
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ApEVuR8s8_wC&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=auxiliary+bishop+of+Yixian&source=bl&ots=14v3Ei5_9T&sig=hmYPxPIc7j-FOk6hTKEfjQIlFc8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=HSjZVOkp5cHuBsbcgegL&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%20Yixian&f=false

http://www.ucanews.com/news/chinese-prelate-held-in-secret-for-14-years-dies-at-age-94/72910

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/397953/death-prisoner-nina-shea

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Remembering-Mgr-Peter-Liu-Guandong,-standard-bearer-of-the-underground-Church-29494.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11396106/Catholic-bishop-dies-in-China-after-14-years-in-prison.html

http://thetablet.org/bishop-cosmas-shi-enxiang-of-yixian/

http://www.gcatholic.org/hierarchy/data/bishops-73.htm#46560