Convent of Marcilla, Navarre, Spain, September 12, 1921. Left to right, Augustinian Recollect student classmates Fabián Otamendi, Hernán Biurrun, Fermín Samanes, Sabino Elizondo, Pedro García de Galdiano, Mariano Alegría, Mariano Gazpio and Pedro Zunzarren. Four of them (Elizondo, Alegría, Gazpio y Zunzarren) formed part of the first Augustinian Recollect community in China three years later. Also, García de Galdiano was Prior Provincial of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine (1940-1946) and visited as such in October 1940 the mission of Kweiteh.

He arrived in China at the age of 24, without understanding the language or knowing the local culture. With his affable character, his humility and his deep spiritual life, father Mariano Gazpio gained the trust and affection of the people; entered those hearts to such an extent that many decided to join the ecclesial community and actively participate in evangelization. This is the story of a “good person” missionary who is already on his way to the altars.

As noted, Mariano Gazpio was one of the Augustinians Recollect missionaries who was on the Kweiteh/Shangqiu mission in Henan, China, from its foundation to the absolute freezing of its activity. He arrived at age 24 and left at age 52.

It was 28 years of long human experiences that were weaving a tapestry where the threads of divine grace embroidered many virtues in the personality of that young religious and missionary. As a volunteer, at first, Mariano was full of great apostolic ideals and a certain juvenile naiveté. The circumstances made him a religious and missionary of great maturity, of holiness affirmed in the crucible of the trial, of humanity practiced on the borders of life: poverty, hunger, disease, persecution, violence, and war.

Those years were truly exceptional and difficult. China was embroiled in great economic, political and social instability, plunged into intertwined struggles of power between warlords from different territories. On top of that, there was the serious and constant danger of organized banditry, a raving plague; no one was safe anywhere, nor could he undertake any journey without serious fear of being assaulted.

Soon on the mission were felt the consequences of China’s war of reunification and the founding by Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China in Nanjing in 1927. In 1930 the war would strike the mission again. Only after that time and until the start of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 did the mission enjoys a certain period of peace and quiet.

The Japanese invasion hit the mission on its structures and buildings and had a very large negative impact on the mission and the population. It provoked the presence of thousands of refugees seeking protection and shelter: thousands of people had lost and could only beg to survive.

With the entry into World War II of the Pacific Front (1941-1945), the mission went into isolation from the outside world and its economic situation worsened. There were truly tragic scenes of hunger and death. There were no resources to keep missionaries, religious, seminarians, catechists, orphans.

Finally, from 1945 the civil war between communists and nationalists was permanent, until the final triumph and establishment of the communist regime.

Mariano Gazpio was, amid all this, a person of absolute confidence in Providence, with total abandonment of himself to the loving and mysterious designs of God; he lived that hard reality from the slogan of St Augustine in the City of God (18,51,2):

“[The Church] pilgrims in the midst of the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God”.

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