Ephrem Giesen (1868–1919; Chinese name: 申永福 Shen Yongfu) was a

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

priest of the Dutch

Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related Mendicant orders, mendicant Christianity, Christian Catholic religious order, religious orders within the Catholic Church. Founded in 1209 by Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi, these orders include t ...

order of the

Roman Catholic church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

who served in northern

Shandong Shandong ( , ; ; alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilizati ...

province and as a member of the Dutch Fransciscan mission of south

hanxi Hanxi may refer to: * Hanxi Subdistrict, a subdistrict of Hanjiang District, Putian, Fujian, China * Han opera, a Chinese opera genre from Hubei, formerly known as ''Hanxi'' * Han River (Taiwan), a river in Taichung, Taiwan * Yilan Creole Japanese, ...

in the late

Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...

and early republican China. He served as

vicar apostolic A vicar (; Latin: ''vicarius'') is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior (compare "vicarious" in the sense of "at second hand"). Linguistically, ''vicar'' is cognate with the English pref ...

of North

from 1902 until his death in 1919 and was also made titular Bishop of

Paltus :''Paltus may also refer to a Russian Kilo class submarine'' Paltus or Paltos ( el, Πάλτος) is a ruined city. It was also a bishopric, a suffragan of Seleucia Pieria in the Roman province of Syria Prima, that, no longer being a residential ...

in 1902.

Early life and missionary work in China

Giesen was born in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

16 October 1868. He entered the

order at

Maastricht Maastricht ( , , ; li, Mestreech ; french: Maestricht ; es, Mastrique ) is a city and a municipality in the southeastern Netherlands. It is the capital and largest city of the province of Limburg. Maastricht is located on both sides of the ...

in 1866, and was ordained in 1893. His first posting in China was to the South Shanxi mission in 1894, serving there through the period of the

Boxer Rebellion The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by ...

until his appointment as vicar apostolic of North Shandong in 1902, moving to

Jinan Jinan (), Postal Map Romanization, alternately romanization of Chinese, romanized as Tsinan, is the Capital (political), capital of Shandong province in East China, Eastern China. With a population of 9.2 million, it is the second-largest city i ...

and working with Italian missionaries based in the region. By the time of his appointment as titular Bishop of

in 1902, he was said to preside in Jinan over 11 Franciscan friars, 18 native Chinese priests, 18,000 Catholics, 13,900 catechumens, and 134 churches or chapels. While in China, Giesen sought financial support from the German government and to place the North Shandong mission under German protection, which would come to pass eventually in 1914. The work of Giesen and other Dutch missionaries, helped keep the German missions survive in Shandong during and in the aftermath of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

Boxer Rebellion

In the spring of 1900, as the

was unfolding across northern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, Ephrem Giesen was located at Xinzhuang, south of Machang, where a Catholic fortified stronghold had been established. Giesen was wounded on two occasions in violent clashes with Boxers in the summer of that year, at the peak of the crisis. Local Catholics managed to hold off Boxers in many cases, and there were no Dutch friars killed in the attacks in the region during the summer of 1900.

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External links

Bishop Ephrem Giesen, O.F.M.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Giesen, Ephrem 1868 births 1919 deaths Clergy from Amsterdam 19th-century Dutch Roman Catholic priests Roman Catholic missionaries in China Dutch Franciscans

Early life and missionary work in China

Boxer Rebellion

Further reading

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Bibliography

External links