Little Li: The Child Martyr of the Eucharist in China

by Charlotte Allen (excerpt from her 2021 article for the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship)

She was a little Chinese Catholic girl, in a country where Catholics were and are only a demographic drop in the most populous country in the world, a country where Christians have been regarded for more than 100 years as dupes at best, agents at worst, of imperialistic Western powers. Their churches were marked for obliteration.

The little Catholic girl has been given a name—Li—but we don’t know if that was really her name. In several versions of the story she has no name at all. We don’t know exactly where in China she lived, either, perhaps the rural setting near Shanghai that is sometimes mentioned. Her age is usually given as 10 or 11, but we don’t really know about that, either. We know she lived in the twentieth century, and there is a strong likelihood that it was the mid-twentieth century, right after Mao Zedong completed his communist takeover of China.

Little Li never made it to adolescence; she was killed for her faith right in her village parish church. She has become a legend. Like so many of the early martyrs of the Church, she was a real soul whose story was taken up by other real souls looking for reasons to believe. Her story has been told, retold, and embellished by many tellers in an age hungry for faith, in a culture where terror and poverty have often reigned together, in a world riven by world wars, holocausts, and new weapons of mass destruction.

Many of the facts are uncertain except the most important one: Little Li—let’s call her that—was a martyr of the Eucharist. She gave her life in an act of Christian heroism and devotion to the Eucharist that has inspired multitudes.

What would you do if you were a Catholic and government troops invaded your parish church, imprisoning your parish priest? What would you do if the soldiers broke into the tabernacle, took the ciborium, and scattered the Hosts on the floor in an act of desecration designed to both terrorize you and demoralize you, to threaten everything and everyone you knew and loved?

What would you do? Many people under such pressure buckled and joined the secularizing majority.

Here is what Li did: After nightfall, she slipped back into the church and observed a Holy Hour in front of the Hosts scattered on the church floor. After she finished the devotion, she carefully bent down and consumed just a single one of the Hosts with her tongue.

As a layperson in those pre-Vatican II days, little Li had been taught it was wrong to touch the Host with her hands. And she knew that in ordinary circumstances lay people were not supposed to consume more than one Host in a day. (She didn’t know of the exception granted to prevent the desecration of the Eucharist.)

So, at great risk each time, Li patiently returned to the church night after night to observe her Holy Hour and consume another precious piece of the Body of Christ. There were 32 Hosts on the floor, so her nightly visits took just over a month. On the very last night, she was caught by a soldier guarding the church and killed.

The story of little Li became associated with Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the Catholic media personality whose television show, “Life Is Worth Living,” drew as many as thirty million weekly viewers during the 1950s. Sheen was a tireless promoter of the Holy Hour as a Catholic devotion.

In his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, completed shortly before his death in 1979 at age 84 but not published until 1982, Sheen wrote about the sufferings of Chinese Catholics in the wake of Mao’s revolution that established a Communist regime in China that has lasted to this day. Sheen wrote this:

“Elsewhere in China, a priest had just begun Mass when Communists entered and arrested him and made him a prisoner in a house adjoining the little church. From a window in that house he could see the tabernacle. Shortly after his imprisonment, the Communists opened the tabernacle, threw the Hosts on the floor, and stole the Sacred Vessels. The priest then decided ­­ to make adoration to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament as much as he could day and night. About three o’clock one morning, he saw a child who had been at the morning Mass open a window, climb in, come to the sanctuary floor, get down on both knees, press her tongue to the Host to give herself Holy Communion. The priest told me there were about thirty Hosts in the ciborium. Every single night she came at the same time until there was only one Host left.  As she pressed her tongue to receive the Body of Christ, a shot rang out. A Communist soldier had seen her. It proved to be her Viaticum.”

According to people who knew Sheen or knew his work, this was an incident that Sheen had repeated in talks and interviews during his long priestly and media ministry. In particular, they say, Sheen had revealed in a 1979 television interview that little Li’s fervent devotion to the Eucharist had been the inspiration for his preaching. It was her story as well, according to accounts, that had led Sheen to promise that he, personally, would observe a Holy Hour of prayer and adoration before the Blessed Sacrament every day of his priestly life, a promise that he kept.

Witnesses to Freedom

The following essay by Sofia Cornicelli was selected as the 2023 winner of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ religious liberty essay contest on the theme “Witnesses to Freedom.”

Tongue pressed stealthily to the floor, the Littlest Witness consumed her Lord. In that brief moment, the darkness of Communist occupation recoiled from her tiny 11-year-old soul. Freedom poured over her as the night breezes did into the drafty church she was kneeling in. She exhaled, noiselessly, and rose, noiselessly, and exited, noiselessly. She would return again the following night.

She was the smallest of the seeds in God’s heavenly garden. A little mustard seed lost in the prickly haystack of Communist China. A soul so small that we are not even sure of her real name. Most call her, simply, “Little Li.” Nevertheless, her witness to religious freedom sprung up just like her Lord promised: as tall as a mustard tree. Her story, retold over and over with the purpose of inspiring those living under oppressive governments like herself, eventually inspired the dearly loved Archbishop Fulton Sheen, and he shared her story with his faithful 30 million weekly viewers. He claimed she was the inspiration behind his daily Holy Hours. Imagine, such a little witness to freedom inspiring so many!

A dangerous mission

This is something Little Li could never have foreseen on that fateful day when her parish priest was arrested. It was the day Mao Zedong completed his Communist takeover of China, in the middle of the 20th century. It was the day her church was “marked for obliteration.” Little Li watched, resolute, as her priest was locked up, a prisoner in his own church. She watched as the Communist soldiers tore her Lord from His most sacred home in the tabernacle and scattered His Body across the floor. She watched as they mocked His Real Presence. The majority of her fellow villagers fled to the safety of secularism. How her little soul, so inflamed with God’s grace, must have shuddered at the sight of her religious liberty being stripped away from her in only a day! Thirty-two hosts lay desecrated on the sanctuary floor, and she was only a little girl who could do nothing grand or monumental.

“Your Father who sees in secret will reward you,” the Evangelist Matthew reminds us. Little Li, under the stifling hand of her Communist oppressors, had no choice but to act in secrecy, and her Father did reward her. Each night, the imprisoned priest watched as Li’s little silhouette crept through a church window unnoticed. Each night, she observed a Holy Hour alongside her scattered Lord. Each night, for 32 nights unbroken, she consumed one of the desecrated Hosts. “Every single night,” Fulton Sheen relates in his 1982 autobiography, “she came at the same time until there was only one Host left. As she pressed her tongue to receive the Body of Christ, a shot rang out. A Communist soldier had seen her. It proved to be her Viaticum.”

A model of love

Just so, the Littlest Witness won her crown of martyrdom, and just so, she became a symbol of the fight for religious freedom. In one version of the story, the soldier who shot her, upon realizing what she was doing, was shocked by his horrific deed and released the imprisoned priest, saying: “Sir, if in every town there was such a little girl, no soldier would ever fight for the Communists!” Her actions, though small and carried out in the stealth of darkness, had proven to be a worthy opponent to the iron grip of communism.

Li’s little way of standing up for religious freedom, while demanding heroic bravery, is a more attainable method than the ordinary Catholic layperson might think. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that preserving our religious freedom is something to be left to the great minds of our country and our Church. Figures like St. Thomas More and St. Anselm, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison immediately come to mind. These great men had positions and opportunities that the ordinary Catholic laity often never come into contact with. Little Li, however, reminds us of the power of prayer and devotion to the Holy Eucharist. In her little way of simply keeping watch with Our Lord and receiving His Precious Body, she teaches us that the body of the Church can be just as influential as its leading members by being devoted to prayer and being willing, like the Littlest Witness, to give the ultimate sacrifice of our lives.