ASIA/CHINA - New burial for the earthly remains of a young Belgian missionary and a consecrated lay woman remembering “their missionary example”

Bao Tou (Agenzia Fides) – “We have come here today not only to give new burial and to inaugurate this beautiful plaque in memory of Scheut missionary Fr. Jozef Leemans, (CICM), and Yan Francesca Chiara, but also to remember their missionary example and the evangelising mission they left us. They did exactly as Jesus commanded: ‘Go into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature (Mk 16, 15)”. Fr Chen Hai, parish priest at Gu Yang, diocese of di Bao Tou, Inner Mongolia, said this yesterday, 14 July, at a solemn ceremony to give new burial in the grounds of the parish church of the earthly remains of a young Belgian missionary Fr. Leemans (Lu Shi Yu in Chinese) and a consecrated lay woman Yan Francesca Chiara.
According to information sent to Fides, Fr. Jozef Leemans (Lu Shi Yu in Chinese) was born on 17 October 1894 in Belgium. He arrived in China 8 November 1922 and was sent to the parish of He Jiao in 1923. In 1925 at Easter, he was sent to the parish of Gu Yang, where he died on 26 December of that same year at the young age of 31. The lay consecrated woman, Yan Francesca Chiara, was born in Da Tong, in the province of Shan Xi, in 1865 and she died in 1949, at the age of 84, after dedicating her whole life to serving the Lord. (NZ) (Agenzia Fides 15/07/2010 - righe 22; parole 263)