Francis Xavier Ford

Francis X. Ford, M.M.
Bishop of Kaying (Jiaying)
Enthroned	April 11, 1946
Reign ended	February 21, 1952
Other posts	Vicar Apostolic of Kaying (1935–1946)
Orders
Ordination	December 5, 1917
Consecration	September 21, 1935
Personal details
Born	January 11, 1892 Brooklyn, New York
Died	February 21, 1952(1952-02-21) (aged 60) prison in Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton), China
Nationality	American

Styles of Francis X. Ford
Reference style	The Most Reverend
Spoken style	Your Excellency
Religious style	His Excellency

Francis Xavier Ford, M.M. (January 11, 1892 – February 21, 1952) was an American Roman Catholic bishop and Maryknoll missionary in China. Because of his torture by the Communist Chinese and death in prison in 1952, he is considered a martyr, and his cause for canonization is pending.

Life

Early life and priesthood

Francis Xavier Ford was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Austin Brendan Ford and Elizabeth Rellihan Ford. He attended Cathedral College in Elmhurst, Queens. When he reported to the Maryknoll seminary in Ossining on 14 Sept 1912, he became the first student of the fledgling Maryknoll. He was the first person to matriculate in this institution. He was ordained on December 5, 1917 and became one of the first four American Catholic priests to arrive in China in 1918.

Missionary ministry

In 1918, he served in Yeongkong, Southern China, and in 1921 opened the first Maryknoll seminary in China. He was named Prefect Apostolic of a new mission at Kaying in Northern Guangdong in 1925, and appointed titular bishop of Etenne and Vicar Apostolic of Kaying in 1935. He was consecrated as a bishop on September 21, 1935.

In twenty years of ministering to the Chinese in the Diocese of Kaying, Ford increased his flock from 9,000 to 20,000, and built schools, hostels and churches. He was chairman of the Chinese Catholic Welfare Conference for Southern China and played an important role in establishing the first overseas convent for Maryknoll sisters. When World War II started, Kaying was surrounded by hostile Japanese troops. Nevertheless, the bishop remained at his post, aiding Chinese guerrillas, helping downed Allied airmen escape, relieving war refugees in distress.

Torture and death

In December 1950, the Communists placed Bishop Ford and his secretary, Sister Joan Marie Ryan, under house arrest and charged them with espionage. Though never tried, Ford was taken from his home four months later and publicly paraded, beaten and degraded in some of the cities in which he had done mission work since 1918. His treatment at the hands of the Communists is attested to by Sister Joan Marie.

In one town, a Communist-orchestrated mob beating was so intense that even Ford's Communist guards fled. Though knocked to the ground repeatedly, Ford continued to walk calmly through the crowd until his guards returned. In another town, his neck was bound with a wet rope which almost choked him as it dried and shrank. Another rope was made to trail from under his gown like a tail. To humiliate them both, the Communists forced him to undress before Sister Joan Marie. The last time Sister Joan Marie saw Ford alive was in February 1952, just before he died. She reported that his hair had turned completely white and he was so emaciated that a fellow prisoner remarked that he looked "like a sack of potatoes".

Ford died in prison in Guangzhou (Canton) on February 21, 1952. He was the first American Roman Catholic bishop and fourth American civilian known to have died in the prisons of the Chinese Communists.

Ford's diocese would have been the first Maryknoll territory to be turned over to the native clergy had the Communists not suppressed the local Catholic community. Ford was Maryknoll's first martyr, and the first to be martyred at the hands of Chinese Communists. Ford's remains were never found, having been intentionally scattered by the Chinese Communists. At the time of his death, Ford had been a priest for 34 years and a bishop for 16 years.

Legacy

Cause for canonization

A cause of canonization for Bishop Ford has been introduced, and Auxiliary Bishop Ignatius A. Catanello of Brooklyn, New York is the promoter of the cause.

On July 27, 2011, George Weigel wrote an article for the First Things blog, questioning why Bishop Ford has not yet been beatified. Wiegel opined that the process has been put on hold because of Roman authorities' concerns about offending the Chinese government. Weigel further stated that "[persecuted] Catholics [in China] need the encouragement of a witness like that given by Francis Xavier Ford, whose blood may yet prove to have paved the King's Highway in the Middle Kingdom".

Bishop Ford is the cousin of another Roman Catholic Maryknoll martyr, Sister Ita Ford, M.M., who was tortured, raped and murdered in El Salvador by members of a military death squad along with fellow Catholic missionaries Maura Clarke, M.M., laywoman Jean Donovan, and Dorothy Kazel, O.S.U. on December 2, 1980. She had previously worked with the poor and war refugees as a Maryknoll Sister missionary in Bolivia and Chile.

Memorials

• In 1952, the Maryknoll Fathers in Hong Kong founded a co-educational primary school, and named it Bishop Ford Memorial School (Chinese: 福德學校). The school was the first founded by the Maryknoll Fathers in Hong Kong after the Second World War, and is now managed by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong.
• In 1962, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn named one of its high schools after Ford. Bishop Ford Central Catholic High School is accredited by the Regents of the State of New York and the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. It is located in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn.

Bibliography

The following are books by Bishop Ford, posthumously published:

• Stone in the King's Highway: Selections from the Writings of Bishop Francis Xavier Ford. New York: McMullen. 1953. OCLC 1124239. 
• Come Holy Ghost: Thoughts on Renewing the Earth as the Kingdom of God. Orbis Books. 1976. ISBN 9780883440674. 

Biographies

• Betz, Eva K. (1953). To Far Places: The Story of Francis X. Ford. New York: Hawthorn Books. OCLC 2940634. 
• Donovan, John F. (1967). The Pagoda and the Cross: The Life of Bishop Ford of Maryknoll. New York: Scribner. OCLC 1376571.