Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei

Ignatius Pin-Mei Cardinal Kung (Simplified Chinese: 龚品梅; Traditional Chinese: 龔品梅; Hanyu Pinyin: Gōng Pǐnméi; Wade-Giles: Kung P'in-mei) (August 2, 1901 – March 12, 2000) was the Roman Catholic bishop of Shanghai in China from 1950 until his death, spending 30 years in Chinese prisons for defying attempts by China's communist government to control Roman Catholics through the state control.

Kung was secretly named a Cardinal in the consistory of 1979 by Pope John Paul II, while serving a life sentence for counter-revolutionary activities. After he was released in 1986, he was kept under house arrest until 1988. Until 1991, his membership in the College of Cardinals was kept secret, or "in pectore"; this is a formula that has been used when the pope wants to name a cardinal in a country where the Church is oppressed, to protect the safety of the cardinal and his congregation. Cardinal Kung himself didn't know until he had a private meeting with Pope John Paul in Vatican City in 1988; by then, he had passed the age limit for participating 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 in Stamford with Cardinal James Francis Stafford, President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, presiding. Cardinal Kung's body was then transported to Star of the Sea Church in San Francisco, California, for a Low Mass and rosary service, with Cardinal Paul Shan Kuo-hsi of Taiwan presiding. A burial 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. Cardinal Kung is interred next to Dominic Tang, S.J. (Archbishop of Canton, China) at Mission Santa Clara de Asís in Santa Clara, California.cite web | url=http://www.cardinalkungfoundation.org/cardinal/fnd-funeral.html | title="The Funeral" | publisher=The Cardinal Kung Foundation | accessdate=2007-06-02 ]

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External links

* [http://www.google.co.uk/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cardinalkungfoundation.org%2Fpress%2F000312.html&_gwt_no
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* [http://www.cardinalkungfoundation.org/ Cardinal Kung Pin Mei Foundation, website]
* [http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bkupm.html Profile on "Catholic hierarchy"]