Fr. Éleuthère Joseph
Winance was born in Mons in the province of Hainaut in Belgium on
July 10, 1909. He received his early education from the Jesuits.
He entered the Benedictine Monastery of Sint Andries (St. Andrè, St.
Andrew) Zevenkerken in Bruges (Brugge) at the age of 17 in 1927. He
entered the Novitiate at the age of 18, made his profession on
January 15, 1929 and his solemn profession three years later in
1932.
From 1929 to 1936 he took his education at the
Catholic University of Louvain, where he studied under such esteemed
teachers as Maurice De Wulf, Fernand van Steenberghen and Georges
Van Riet. Studying Theology and Philosophy he earned his doctorate
in Philosophy under Van Steenberghen at the Institut supérieur de
philosophie. His dissertation was on Ludwig Babenstuber (1660-1726)
Chancellor of the University of Salzburg.
In 1925 the first Chinese Catholic Bishop was
consecrated by Rome, and the Abbot Theodore Neve of Sint Andries
promised help to the Chinese fledgling church. He sent two priests
to China in 1929 who established a monastery in Szechuan near the
city of Nanchong. In 1933 the abbot told Éleuthère he was to go to
China. As Fr. Éleuthère put it, "In this time we were not to
choose; we were simply told to go." So after completion of his
studies in Louvain, he left Belgium for China on September 4, 1936,
through Russia via the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Fr. Éleuthère and his colleagues spent 1936-37
learning Chinese so that their missionary activities would be more
effective, yet in those days the Church Liturgies were still said in
Latin. So they endeavored to speak only Chinese and Latin. In 1937
they started a Seminary in Nanchong and had about 10 Seminarians.
During World War II the monks were virtually cut off from the
outside world, and in 1942 because of the war and lack of funds they
were forced to close the Seminary and move their monastery to
Chengdu. In 1948 he served a 200 family parish. At the end of the
war peace did not come when civil war broke out between Communist
and Nationalist forces. By 1949 the Communists were victorious,
when the Chiang Kai-Shek nationalists escaped to Formosa and
Taipei. The communists then instituted a National Church
independent of Rome, and the communists instituted a program of
re-education to those who remained loyal to Rome.
In 1952 Fr. Éleuthère was condemned for not being
a member of the National Church, for belonging to the Legion of
Mary, saying things to his students hostile to the communists. So
Éleuthère and 12 others were expelled and sent to Hong Kong under
guard humiliated and ridiculed all the way.
After arriving back from China the Abbot sent Fr.
Éleuthère to teach Philosophy at the college of San Anselmo in
Rome. He taught there for four years, after which he was sent to
teach at St John's in Collegeville Minnesota. There he stayed for
five years, while the Monastery in Szechuan was transferred to
Valyermo California. In 1961 Fr. Éleuthère came to Valyermo and
began serving as the novice-master, while teaching at Immaculate
Heart College in Los Angeles, the Sisters of Social Service and St.
Johns in Camarillo. In 1963 he was asked to teach at Claremont
Graduate School and Pomona College for one year, but stayed more
that 35. At Claremont he taught Seminars in Medieval
Philosophy (Aquinas, Augustine, Scotus and others) and Phenomenology
(Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre) as well as other Seminars in
Descartes, Consciousness in the French Tradition etc. as well as
supervising Doctoral Dissertations for a number of Students. In
1974 Fr. Éleuthère went to Bangor, India to teach monks and
Seminarians there, and in 1980 and also 1984 he taught philosophy at
St. Paul's Pontifical Seminary in Zaire.
In latter years Fr. Éleuthère has busied himself
writing and saying Mass at St. Andrews Valyermo, as well preaching,
sometimes as much as five times a week.*
* The above information
is extracted from an article in the Valyermo Chronicle no.
182 summer, 1998 and an article "Give me Jesus" by Christopher
Zehnder in the Los Angeles Lay Catholic Mission September,
1998 (See:
http://www.valyermo.com/monks/eleuth.html and
http://www.losangelesmission.com/ed/articles/1998/0998cz2.htm )
and Fr. Éleuthère's book The Communist Persuasion.
