Diocese Shanghai Term ended 12 March 2000 See Shanghai Name Ignatius Pin-Mei Ordination May 28, 1930 | Appointed 15 July 1950 Role Cardinal Consecration October 7, 1949 Installed 1950 | |
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Other posts Bishop of Soochow (1949-50)Apostolic Administrator of Soochow (1950-2000)Apostolic Administrator of Archdiocese of Nanking (1950-2000) Place of burial Santa Clara, California, United States | ||
Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei (simplified Chinese: 龚品梅; traditional Chinese: 龔品梅; pinyin: Gōng Pǐnméi; Wade–Giles: Kung P'in-mei; August 2, 1901 – March 12, 2000) was the Roman Catholic Bishop of Shanghai, China, from 1950 until his death. He spent 30 years in Chinese prisons for defying attempts by China's Communist government to control Roman Catholics in the country through the government-approved Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.
On September 8, 1955, Cardinal Kung, along with several hundred priests and church leaders, was arrested and imprisoned. He was sentenced five years later to life imprisonment for counter-revolutionary activities.
Kung was secretly named a Cardinal in pectore in the consistory of 1979 by Pope John Paul II. The formula in pectore is used when a pope names a cardinal without announcing it publicly in order to protect the safety of the cardinal and his congregation. After he was released in 1986, he was kept under house arrest until 1988. Kung learned he was a cardinal during a private meeting with the Pope in Vatican City in 1988, and his membership in the College of Cardinals was made public in 1991. By then, he had reached 80, so he did not have the right to participate in a conclave.
He died in 2000, aged 98, from stomach cancer in Stamford, Connecticut. His funeral was held at St. John the Evangelist Church (now the Basilica of Saint John the Evangelist) in Stamford with Cardinal James Francis Stafford, President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, presiding. Kung's body was then transported to Star of the Sea Church in San Francisco, California, for a Low Mass with Cardinal Paul Shan Kuo-hsi of Taiwan presiding. A requiem Pontifical High Mass using the Tridentine Liturgy in Latin was said the following day at Five Wounds Parish in San Jose, California, with Cardinal Shan again presiding. Kung is interred next to Dominic Tang, S.J. (Archbishop of Canton, China) at Santa Clara Mission Cemetery in Santa Clara, California.
