Wang Yumei, Joseph, St.

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WANG YUMEI, JOSEPH, ST.

Lay martyr; b. 1823, Majiazhuang, Wei County, Hebei (Hopeh) Province, China; d. there, July 21, 1900. Sixty-eight-year-old Joseph Wang Yumei (spelled otherwise Yü-mei or Jou-Mei) was arrested by the Boxers and immediately killed because he was the village leader of the Catholics. The others, including SS. Anna Wang, Lucy Wang, and Andrew Wang Tianqing were martyred the following day. He was among the 2,072 killed between June and August 1900 whose causes were submitted to the Vatican. Of these, 56, including Joseph, were beatified by Pope Pius XII (April 17, 1955) and canonized (Oct. 1, 2000) by Pope John Paul II with Augustine Zhao Rong and companions.

Feast: July 20.

Bibliography: l. miner, China's Book of Martyrs: A Record of Heroic Martyrdoms and Marvelous Deliverances of Chinese Christians during the Summer of 1900 (Ann Arbor 1994). j. simon, Sous le sabre des Boxers (Lille 1955). c. testore, Sangue e palme sul fiume giallo. I beati martiri cinesi nella persecuzione della Boxe Celi Sud-Est, 1900 (Rome 1955). L'Osservatore Romano, Eng. ed. 40 (2000): 12, 10.

[k. i. rabenstein]