The Augustinian Recollect Pedro Colomo Villanueva (Puente La Reina, Navarra, Spain, 1899 • † Valladolid, Spain, 1979) coordinated a project to help eliminate prejudices and reservations against foreigners in the Chinese population and attract them to Christian values that they recognized as valuable and acceptable.
From the moment they set foot in Shangqiu (Henan, China) in 1924, the Augustinian Recollects understood that evangelization is linked to the sowing of evangelical values, including those social values whose starting point is “loving one’s neighbor.”
There were two ways to do this sowing: the personal example of the missionary, who displays such values in his daily life, and the implementation of social projects related to solidarity, equality, social justice, respect, support for the vulnerable, peace, and coexistence.
Health as a right
Until the arrival of the Christians in Shangqiu, health care was private and very expensive for the sick. Traditional medicine had its successes and achieved cures, especially for minor and frequent ailments, but it practiced the concealment of formulas and practices and a clear profit motive.
In addition, more collaboration between professionals is needed. Without scientific research or dissemination of new treatments, each doctor specialized in a single ailment: he knew nothing about the others and did not treat them.
The Canadian Protestants opened a Western medicine hospital in Shangqiu, which was successful among the population. The Augustinian Recollect missionaries were very fortunate to have a religious man in the Mission who had a degree in Medicine from the Catholic University of Saint Thomas of the Dominics in Manila.
This is Pedro Colomo, who arrived in Shangqiu on September 23, 1930. After learning the language and a period of adaptation and material preparation for the project, on February 20, 1932, the Catholic medical dispensary was opened in two spacious rooms, one for the consulting room and the other as a waiting room.
The idea of having this Dispensary had been entertained in the mission for some time. It was a crucial need for the people and would help break the void to which strong nationalist influences subjected foreign missionaries. People had misgivings, suspicions, mistrust, and distrust toward everything from the outside.
Humanization of health
Colomo was a pioneer in public health. Years before becoming part of the standardized plans, he devised a vaccination during a cholera epidemic that saved many lives. He also provided prevention against malaria. With his scientific, curious, and open mind, he valued traditional medicine and gained the trust of some of its professionals to learn about plants, mixtures, and measures for therapeutic use. The dispensary offered primary care, pharmacy, and terminal care in their homes. Only those who could afford it paid a fee. The work was done with the criteria of humanization of health, which eliminated the prejudices of suffering and abandoned people who had rarely had the opportunity to feel like someone, subject to rights and treated with respect.
The care, affection, and respect with which everyone was treated made an impression, and many considered the advantages of practicing these Christian values. They accepted the missionaries more and better and came closer to the faith.
The Catechists of Christ the King, a congregation founded in the mission at the request of the Recollect religious with Chinese vocations, collaborated enormously with Colomo. They learned nursing and improved communication with patients. They specialize in in-home visits to the terminally ill to give them palliative treatment, listening, comfort, and attention. Over time, they opened small rural dispensaries, some specialized in ophthalmological treatments.
Historical vicissitudes
As soon as Colomo arrived in 1930, he began to care for 7/9 people a day. With the the dispensary has been open since 1932 and with the help of the Catechists of Christ the King, it rose to 25 consultations/day in 1937, and the maximum peak was in 1950 at 50.
The clinic went through the same vicissitudes as the rest of the mission, which slowed its development and forced its closure at times: it suffered war, occupations, theft, looting, and intermittent arrival of resources and supplies.
The first stoppage occurred in May 1938, when the Japanese arrived in Shangqiu. After bombing the city, they looted the mission and the Dispensary and loaded seven trucks with the stolen goods. Nothing of value was left. Unable to work safely, Colomo was commissioned to take the young Chinese seminarians first to Seliulou and then to Changkungtsi, districts far from the main routes and unattractive to looting because of their poverty.
In the People’s Republic
Ten years later, in 1948, the Maoist troops’ advance in the civil war’s final stages hindered the missionary task. On December 6 that year, Shangqiu became part of the People’s Republic. Colomo was influential in the first meeting between the Recollect missionaries and the new authorities. Thus, the communist general was in poor health, and Colomo offered to examine and provide him with the needed medicines. Grateful and relieved, he promised protection, but it only lasted a month. In January 1949, with the battle of Xuzhou, the civil war ended in the region. The victors occupied the mission, and the temple became a Maoist training site.
Between 1949 and 1950, the only thing that functioned normally in the Mission was the the Medical Dispensary was expanded to three departments: internal medicine, surgery, and ophthalmology. Many patients came from the troops and cadres of the Communist Party, whose living conditions and health were deplorable.
Colomo exercised without the slightest hesitation his Hippocratic oath and his Christian vocation of love for the enemy: he cared for them as he did for everyone else; he advised them and provided them with what they needed for their recovery: they were sick, not enemies.
At the beginning of 1951, the Catholic Mission and the Dispensary were closed; the medicines and utensils were confiscated. Colomo was sent to care for the population of Siayi for a year since he could no longer do anything for the health of others without means or resources. By the way, the Catechists of Cristo Rey, who had collaborated with Colomo, managed for some time to maintain a sure community life with another
Chinese Recollect religious thanks to their knowledge of Ophthalmology. They opened a consultation that allowed them to survive economically and maintain the perfect cover for living together, with a schedule and way of life very similar to that of a religious community.
Even this allowed the religious to maintain contact in Shanghai with the last Spanish Recollect in China for some years and to deliver the previous reports until, in 1955, everything finally collapsed, and three decades of the Church of the Catacomb began.
Abandoning an entire life in a few days
On January 23, 1952, the journey that would take Colomo out of China for good began, accompanied by the Recollect Mariano Gazpio, today on his way to the altars. They were forced to abandon their life and vocational project of the last 25 years in a few hours.
The train left Shangqiu behind in the direction of Kaifeng, from where they continued to Zhengzhou and Hankou (Hunan), where the Augustinians welcomed them. They took a short break with them and enjoyed their Augustinian charisma in China for the last time.
The journey continued to Guangzhou, where they joined up with about fifty Italians, Russians, and Americans who had also been expelled. They continued to Shenzhen, on the border with Hong Kong, which was then under English rule. Once they crossed the border, they would never return to China.
Colomo and Gazpio went from Hong Kong to the Philippines, where they remained until March 30. On April 24, 1952, they arrived at the provincialate of the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine in Zaragoza, Spain, after stopping in Palestine and Rome.
Silence and illness
Colomo was assigned to Navarre, first to the convent of Marcilla and in 1965 to the novitiate of Monteagudo. For some time, he looked after the health of the minor seminarians and carried out their medical check-ups at certain times a year. Without further analysis, he usually detected any health problems, which were confirmed and treated.
The last 27 years of Colomo’s life were relatively silent. It is possible that the abrupt and painful end of his stay in China took its toll on his health because he no longer appears much in chronicles or writings.
In 1976, he was transferred to Valladolid, already in a state of illness and with his mental health deteriorated by senility. On October 20, 1979, he died in the University Clinical Hospital after several days in a coma at the age of 80.
At his funeral the following day, Brother Pedro’s simplicity, kindness, and joyful spirit, which he had given throughout his life to the different Recollect religious communities he served, were highlighted.
