A missionary of the old school

`Mao gave us a big compliment, he said the church was public enemy number one." Father Aedan McGrath, originally a Dubliner from Drumcondra, recalls being put in prison because of his missionary work as a Columban Father in China: "I was arrested on the 7th of September 1951. I was put in a tiny cell, like a dog box. It was solitary confinement for three years. There was no table, chair or bed. I could lie on the floor. It wasn't like Mountjoy, nor one of these prisons that are like first-class hotels. I was never allowed to close my eyes, talk or sneeze. All around me people were going mad. They did not have their faith."

Even during his youth in Ireland, Father McGrath was surrounded by violence and upheaval. He remembers 1916: "I saw the poor fellows being led away from the GPO to be executed in Kilmainham." He was a student at Belvedere College in Dublin where his classmates included Kevin Barry: "He was a nice boy. I played football with him. I was there the day the poor boy was hanged in Mountjoy. They were sad years."

His father, a county court judge, was shot by the Black and Tans in 1921: "We never went back to that house afterwards. My sister never recovered. We went to Wales and she died there." He is a brisk, diminutive, kindly-faced man. He looks about 65, and he has the energy of someone even younger. He is 92 this month: "The Chinese would say I am 93. They count the nine months you spend in your mother's womb before you are born." Even though he hasn't been in China for 50 years, he still speaks Mandarin.

He was ordained in 1929. The following year, he was sent as a missionary to Hanyang: "I was there just in time for the flood. The Yangzi and the Han rivers met and overflowed. Millions of people drowned. For six months, there was 16 feet of water in the house where I was staying. We had to live upstairs." He was sent to central China to "a place with no church, and the Bishop never came to see me in the 16 years I was there".

Nevertheless, he was very happy: "You couldn't help loving the Chinese. They were so loyal to their families and they respected their parents and grandparents. They didn't send the old people away. You never heard them talk about divorce. It was all based on the wonderful philosophy of Confucius, who was against contraception and masturbation."

When Father McGrath first arrived, he stayed with a Buddhist family. "There were three generations: a grandfather, three sons, and 20 grandchildren. The house expanded with the family. They just built on and spread out." Living conditions were unsophisticated: "They had a pickle factory and there were rats everywhere."

He had 25 missions spread out over a wide area: "I spent three days in each place, staying in a straw hut. I brought my own blanket. There were no roads or buses. I walked - good exercise for a young man." It took him "a couple of months" to cover all the ground.

He admits that in those early days he felt "helpless". "I wrote to the bishop asking for a priest or a sister. He sent me a Legion of Mary handbook. I thought: `Impossible'. But in those days you obeyed the bishop." He found the handbook "extremely spiritual" and felt it was "too high" for ordinary people. But "I needed lay people to help, so I started with a group of men." With "the grace of God", he soon had 135 lay people working with him.

In 1939, during "the rape of Nanjing", 6,000 Japanese soldiers arrived: "1,500 women ran to me looking for protection. I was supposed to keep the Japanese army out. God directed me to one particular soldier. We started talking about movies. He asked me if I liked Loretta Young, and I said `She's a personal friend of mine'. I had met her in Hollywood. He was very excited to learn that I knew his love in Hollywood. He wrote something and sealed it and put it on the door. The soldiers all saluted and stayed away. The women stayed with me for six months - they dared not leave - but they were safe. They were all baptised in that time."

He was "put out" for two years because de Valera - then president of the League of Nations - accused the Japanese of trespassing when they went into Manchuria. "When I was allowed back, I expected to find nothing. Instead, the parish was working perfectly without me. The Legion of Mary had kept everything going, baptising the babies, instructing the children, performing marriages. It was wonderful."

In 1949, "the Communists arrived": "Mao was determined to destroy all religions: Buddhists, Muslims, Catholics, Protestants, everything. The communists were anti-God." Father McGrath travelled to universities, starting Legion of Mary groups: "The young Chinese intellectuals realised the communists would expel all the priests, and they would be the only ones left. After a year we had 1,000 groups.

Some 3,000 students were executed and others were given sentences of 10 to 30 years in prison: "There is a Chinese woman living in Dublin now who was arrested when she was 24 and spent 29 years in prison. Half of her life is gone. All she was doing was trying to spread the Gospel. I arranged for her to come to Ireland after she was finally let out."

His lively face takes on a bitter expression when he dwells on the brutality of Mao's tactics: "Mao was a bad man. People suffered terribly. They were afraid to speak about anything - terrified that they would tell on someone under torture. In three years alone, from 1949 to 1951 - long before the Cultural Revolution - 20 million people died. Mao is in the Guinness Book Of Records for killing 80 million people, not for swimming the Yangzi."

He believes that China is still guilty of human rights abuses: "We're waiting for Mary Robinson to sort it out. Even now, those people who spent so long in prison are afraid to write their memoirs. So-called criminals are shot and their kidneys are sent to America for $5,000 each. I saw this when I was in America."

He was in prison for two years and eight months: "At that point they said they'd shoot me but they don't like shooting foreigners, so they kicked me out instead."

During his imprisonment he was "very peaceful". "I had nothing, but I kept myself busy remembering all I had learned at St Columban's in Dalgan Park. I said my Rosary. I did some exercises. I had two tins of rice and a bit of veg every day, as well as some hot water. I was sick a lot my first year. Then my stomach regularised itself."

Years later, he met the Pope in Rome and they said Mass together: "He asked me what had kept me sane when I was in prison, and I said first of all, my faith. Secondly, the doctrine of St Louis Maria de Montfort, a French saint." Coincidentally, the Pope had read de Montfort's book during his years in Poland: "It kept him sane too."

After his expulsion from China, Father McGrath was sent to England to work with Irish immigrants. Once again, the Legion of Mary was "the answer": "I said, OK, now we have a machine. Just as in China."

After 10 years in England, he then spent more than a decade in the US, and is now based in the Philippines. The latter move was in response to a request made by the late Frank Duff, founder of the Legion of Mary: "Before he died in 1980, Frank Duff called me to his house and asked me to go to the Philippines. I said `Why? There are 62 million Catholics there.' He said `If Asia is ever to become Christian, it will be through the Filipino lay people.' It was a prophesy. Now there are 10 million Filipinos outside the Philippines. They are doing a tremendous job all over the world bringing people to Mass."

Taiwan, where he also works, is apparently a very difficult place in which to spread the word: "They have so much money. Faith has gone way down. It could happen in Ireland too. We had better faith when we were fighting for our existence."