Arturo Quintanilla, “representative of Heaven”

Monsignor Arturo Quintanilla Manzanares, born on September 1, 1904, in Berceo, (La Rioja, Spain) is a figure of great relevance in the history of our mission of Kweiteh/Shangqiu, Henan, China, of which he would become its bishop, even though he could do little, due to the communist occupation of the mission and his expulsion.

Monsignor Quintanilla attended primary school in his birth town as a child before entering the preparatory school of San Millán de la Cogolla (La Rioja), where he studied Latin and Humanities. He entered the novitiate when he was 15, studying philosophy and theology in San Millán, Monteagudo, and Marcilla. Three dates marked this first stage:

on October 18, 1920, September 2, 1925, and June 11, 1927. These days represent his consecration to God by simple profession in Monteagudo (Navarra), his definitive consecration to God by solemn profession in Marcilla (Navarra), and its priestly ordination in Calahorra, La Rioja.

Ordained as a priest, Quintanilla left in October of that same year for the Philippines. Father  Francisco Javier Ochoa, after being appointed prefect of Kweiteh/Shangqiu, requested the sending of new missionaries to continue establishing and extending the missionary action of the new prefecture. He got fathers Joaquín Peña and Arturo Quintanilla to offer themselves as volunteers. The provincial accepted and sent this new couple of missionaries. On July 8th Father Joaquín Peña arrived and on August 25, 1928, our protagonist, Father Arturo Quintanilla.

When the new missionaries arrived, Father Ochoa expressed his desire to turn immediately after Easter his pastoral visit to the Vicariate, for which he proposed as secretary to accompany him, to the recently arrived Father Arturo Quintanilla. In this way, the new missionary would have first contact with the reality of the mission and its people. In the chronicle of his visit, Father Quintanilla himself describes to us the situation of the hamlets of the countryside, through which the bulk of the faithful and conversions were spread.  He described village life:

Anthills of human beings, who know no other explanation than to kill hunger, almost all raggedly dressed and the women disheveled, although by the way, they could serve as a model for most of those who in those civilized worlds pride themselves on being honest and modest. in their dressings and their clothing; men, naked from the waist up with blackened backs and in some cracked by the sun; children with no other cover to hide their nakedness than the scab that “Envelops them from head to toe.

Father Quintanilla will describe the situation of these people with an expressive name: they were “potentates of misery.” Father Quintanilla’s first mission was to learn even rudimentarily the Chinese language. He carried it out in Kweiteh under the tutelage of Father Mariano Alegría. In September 1929 he was assigned to the Changkungtsi mission, in the subprefecture of Ningling, which, according to the pastoral visit report, was one of the most flourishing and with more future of the mission.

Despite the promise of the mission, Father Quintanilla also tells us about the realistic situation in which he and the other missionaries found themselves when they were destined for their first missionary post:

It was easy to command, easy also to obey for those who in the flower of age had made obedience is a motto with an oath to follow until death. The difficulty was to exercise the ministry with fruit and benefit of the souls entrusted to them. The catechists and Christian faithful shone for his absence and outside of a great will, of a youth full of fearlessness and fervor missionaries, on that occasion those new standard-bearers of Jesus Christ did not have more auxiliary, from tiles down, than the very imperfect knowledge of a few Chinese phrases that are almost were ashamed to speak in front of people. Those were some years of trial, of hard learning, years that our intrepid brothers and companions still remember with emotion.

In that mission, he served from September 1929 to September 1932, with an interval of a course (1931-1932) that he spent in Shanghai as director of the magazine “All Missionaries”. From 1932 to 1940 he dedicated himself to evangelization in Huchiao, with a break of two years, from 1936 to 38, in which he was assigned to Chutsi, to fill the position of director of the School of Catechists after the departure of Father Mariano Gazpio to the homeland on vacation. During his time in Huchiao, Father Quintanilla stood out for his work as a mediator and man of peace during the time of the Japanese invasion and occupation; thanks to his moral influence and his kind and prudent character, Father Quintanilla managed to remain calm in a period of great tensions caused by the duplicity, and even triplicity, of authorities, who alternated in control of the area: pro-Japanese, nationalist guerrilla and communist guerrilla.

The best and most palpable proof of the affection that he earned during these two difficult years is the farewell made by the authorities and people, pagans and Christians. They bought a piece of velvet cloth and wrote some Chinese characters, whose idea was: Man sent from heaven. With this, they wanted to thank him for all the benefits they had received from him and thanked him for all the favors and protection that he had extended to them during these painful days. Delivery was made solemnly, they paraded the sign through the streets to the sound of music so that all the inhabitants would see it. Then there was a banquet.

 [The characters they wrote on the silk were 「代天宣化」. 「代天」becomes “representative of Heaven”,「宣化」means that “manifests morality”. The classic phrase of where the expression is taken is「當代天宣化，普救世人」which means:“When the representative of heaven proclaims morality, salvation comes to the humanity”].

The heroic, generous, and charitable attitude of the religious not only provoked on the part of the people a public and sincere recognition of the work of the friars but there was a large number of conversions. In this, the friars saw the providential and mysterious hand of the ways of God at that time, that through a situation that seemed like it was going to ruin all the efforts made until then, spilled such abundant thanks to conversions, of people of all types and social conditions, which raised in the friars heartfelt expressions of gratitude and humility before God, as Father Arturo Quintanilla tells us.

It is not only what we could call the plebs who go to the Catholic Church in demand of light and comfort. They are influential people, some because of their wealth, others because of their studies. It’s not long since the head of the schools appeared at the mission asking for books of doctrine, which he studies with a true hobby and not only studies but addition to its content makes propaganda among his friends. He was when I came to Huchiao, our most rabid enemy. […] he will be a great example that he will move many others since the boss is one of the people with the most authority and influence in all these contours.

After the departure of Mariano Alegría from the mission to go as before Manila, father Arturo Quintanilla would be named religious superior, a position he held from 1940 to 1946. After Ochoa’s resignation, he was elected capitular vicar and finally preached bishop of Kweiteh by the Holiness of Pius XII in November 1949. On January 29, 1950, he was consecrated in Shanghai by the internuncio Monsignor A. Riberi.

When Monsignor Quintanilla entered the mission after his episcopal consecration, seeing that in the time that the communists had been in the city of Kweiteh, they had not bothered the missionaries mostly and who allowed cultural celebrations, and thinking that situation would continue like this, he asked his superiors, with all the best will, to send return to China the five Chinese priests residing in Manila: José She, Lucas Wang, José Wang, Marcos She and Pedro Kuo. The superiors agreed to the request. Marcos She and Pedro Kuo went to Beijing to study.

Fathers José She, Lucas Wang, and José Wang left Shanghai for the mission, but the communists sent them to their respective towns to register them. They were not permitted to move to other locations, thus frustrating the wishes of Monsignor Quintanilla, who wanted to put them in the missionary posts that had been left without missionaries after being expelled from the country. The return was useless since they could not dedicate themselves to the faithful or exercise the priestly ministry. Although Monsignor Quintanilla lived from 1950 to 1952 in Kweiteh, he could not have any pastoral activity because the Communist government did not allow it. Before being expelled, he spent together with Father Lorenzo Peña, a couple of months in jail and the other fourteen, confined to his residence.

The communists sought to obtain accusations against the religious among the people, so this would justify his arrest. In this case, the Christians of Palichoang behaved heroically and they openly confessed that not only had they received no harm from them, but, therefore, On the contrary, they were indebted to them for many and great benefits. On the contrary, among the Christians from Huchiao, where both religious had missioned, managed to extract from them two accusations with which they were taken to jail. After many threats, a Christian accused Mons. Quintanilla of the death of his daughter, because she, he said, had forced his daughter to that she went to school to force her, whether she wanted to or not, to become a nun; like the girl, she got sick tuberculosis and she died, they held the friar responsible for her death. In truth, the only fault of Father Quintanilla was to have supported and encouraged the great desire to go to school of that pious girl, with great moral and intellectual gifts.

They subjected the two missionaries to a parody of a trial in which the other prisoners acted as accusers, witnesses, and judges before the gaze of the police chief, launching terrible and foul expletives; They slapped them and spat in their faces, all without allowing them to say anything. After this cruel travesty, the police chief took their statements and sent them to the Chutsi prison, and, “without stopping smiling, he stated that there was no reason to fear, that the matter was not important, but waited should wait a few days until everything was clear: afterward so that you do not suffer in China, we will let you return to your homeland”.

When Monsignor Quintanilla entered the mission after his episcopal consecration, seeing that in the time that the communists had been in the city of Kweiteh, they had not bothered the missionaries mostly and who allowed cultural celebrations, and thinking that situation would continue like this, he asked his superiors, with all the best will, to send back to China the five Chinese priests residing in Manila: José She, Lucas Wang, José Wang, Marcos She, and Pedro Kuo. The superiors agreed to the request. Marcos She and Pedro Kuo went to Beijing to study.

Fathers José She, Lucas Wang, and José Wang left Shanghai for the mission, but the communists sent them to their respective towns to register them. However, they never were permitted to move to other locations, thus frustrating the wishes of Monsignor Quintanilla, who wanted to put them in the missionary posts that had been left without missionaries after being expelled from the country. The return was useless since they could not dedicate themselves to the faithful or exercise the priestly ministry. Monsignor Quintanilla himself, although he lived from 1950 to 1952 in Kweiteh, could not have any pastoral activity because the communist government did not allow it. Before being expelled, he spent together with Father Lorenzo Peña, a couple of months in jail, and the other fourteen, confined to his residence.

The communists sought to obtain accusations against the religious among the people, to justify their arrest. In this case, the Christians of Palichoang behaved heroically and they openly confessed that not only had they received no harm from them, but, therefore, On the contrary, they were indebted to them for many and great benefits. On the contrary, among the Christians from Huchiao, where both religious had missioned, managed to extract from them two accusations with which they were taken to jail. After many threats, a Christian woman accused Mons. Quintanilla of the death of her daughter, because, she said, he forced her daughter to go to school, whether she wanted to or not, to become a nun; the girl got sick with tuberculosis and died, they held the friar responsible for her death. In truth, the only fault of Father Quintanilla was to have supported and encouraged the great desire to go to school of that pious girl, with great moral and intellectual gifts.

They subjected the two missionaries to a trial parody in which the other prisoners acted as accusers, witnesses, and judges before the gaze of the police chief, launching terrible and foul expletives; They slapped them and spat in their faces, all without allowing them to say nothing. After this cruel travesty, the police chief took their statements and sent them to the Chutsi prison and, “without stopping smiling, he stated that there was no reason to fear, that the matter was not important, but we should wait a few days until everything was clear and added: afterward so that you do not suffer in China, we will let you return to your homeland”.

After the transfer, a judge called them and clarified the reasons for their imprisonment: «In your matter, there is nothing that touches religion; The government does not intervene in this, because there is freedom of conscience. They have arrested you simply because you have been accused of the people, owner, and lord in our popular democracies”.

They spent two months there, eating poorly, among lice, fleas, and rats, in charge throughout the entire month of emptying the cell’s urinals into the outside latrines. This is how the monsignor Quintanilla describes us  this time of spiritual grace for them:

This is how we spend our prison life, monotonous, boring, at times happy and sad, sometimes optimistic and other times, prey to a desperate pessimism; but always, yes, for help special divine grace, very consistent with the most holy will and dispositions of our Celestial father. We had our prayers and meditated; We meditated a lot, as perhaps we never did.

We have not even done in time the best and most fervent spiritual exercises. […] How many We had the opportunity to perform acts of patience, humility, resignation, and charity. Finally, We are convinced that that retreat, although not sought by us, provided us with a rain of abundant graces and blessings that the Lord poured out on our souls. How right we have to bless the hand of the good Father, which all the more demonstrates his goodness and benignity the more proofs he sends to those who are his chosen ones! Because Father Quintanilla began to have severe nosebleeds, two months later they took him out of prison. They were in a sorry state, and with the slogan that the best thing they could do was leave the country, since in the new China there was no room nor was any religion needed.

In August 1952 he was expelled from China by the communists and on September 4 he arrived in Hong Kong. A couple of weeks later he left for the Philippines, where he stayed three months visiting the religious and the houses of the Order. In December, he left for Rome, where he stopped for a few days before finally arriving in Spain, shortly before Christmas.

From 1953 to 1970, he lived as an exiled bishop in Spain. His life in Spain was dedicated to some personal activities and above all to administer the sacrament of confirmation and to make pastoral visits in dioceses when he was invited by the bishops. He conferred orders to members of religious institutes if he was required by their superiors. From 1957 to 1964, at the request of the superior general, he resided in the convent of Marcilla as spiritual director of theologians. After the illness left him disabled and unable to do so, he lived at the Valladolid College without any pastoral activity.

In the early morning hours of November 21, 1970, he died at the College of Valladolid, where he had spent his last years, was handicapped and disabled by the disease that he suffered. On the morning of the 22nd, his body was taken to the cemetery of the city, where after the last response was sung, he received a burial in the cemetery owned by the College of Valladolid.