Manhattan College - Manhattanite Yearbook (Riverdale, NY)

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CARDINAL TIEN HE College was pleased on Holy Thursday, April 20, 1946, to re- ceive a visit from the gracious Chinese Cardinal, His Eminence, Thomas, Cardinal Tien. In the cere- monies of his reception by the President of the College, Brother Thomas offered, in the name of the College and of its Board of Trustees, the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, to which Cardinal Tien graciously assented. Before his de- parture from New York, Brother Thomas made a presentation of this afliliation among the honored sons of Manhattan at the Cardinal's House in New York City. At the commencement exercises, where the citation was read and the proxy for His Eminence, the Reverend Bruno Hagspiel, S.V.D., accepted the honor, formal award of this collegiate honor was bestowed on China's First Cardinal. Tung Lai Tien was born on October 28, 1890 in Chang Tsiu, a town in China's Yen Chow Fu province. Subse- quent to the Boxer Rebellion when re- sentment to foreign influence and its close associate Christianity was, so to speak, at high tide, his father had become a Christian and later a teacher in a South Shantung Seminary. In spite of the in- creasing hardships that those who pro- fessed belief in Christ had to endure, even life itself, Tung Lai was baptised at the age of eleven and took Thomas as his Christian name. Un reaching his four- teenth birthday he entered the Seminary at Yen Chow Fu. Ill health and the oppor- tunity of becoming a landowner did not thwart him in his vocation. He was or- dained on June 9, 1918 by Bishop Hen- ninghaus of the Society of the Divine Worcl, in the Church of the Holy Ghost at Yen Chow F u. Entering the Society of the Divine W'ord in 1929, he was appointed Prefect Apostolic of Yang Ku in Shangtung province in 1934. In response to the plea of Pope Pius XI, he fostered not only native vocations to the priesthood, but many lay activities wherever it was pos- sible. In 1939 he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Yang Fu and raised to the episcopacy by Pope Pius XII. In this new appointment as Vicar Apostolic of Tsing Tao, one of China's oldest and most im- portant seaports, Bishop Tien raised the Catholic population from less than twenty thousand to more than thirty thousand souls in eight years. On December 29, 1945 Bishop Tien received word from the Vatican that at the next Consistory he would be raised to the College of Cardinals. Always the humble priest at heart, Bishop Tien kept repeating a single comment: It must be a mistake V' At the Consistory he was given an ovation rivalling that given the new German Cardinals who, in their country had as valiantly fought the Swastika. Tung Lai, the eleven-year-old Chinese lad had heard his calling clearly. On the armorial bearings of the new Car- dinal is inscribed the device: Adveniat Regnum Tuumf' Here he sums up all the endeavors of his life, the conquest of souls for the kingdom of Christ. Man- hattan is proud to number Thomas, Car- dinal Tien among her adopted sons.

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Organizaiiom