Background
Walsh, James Edward was born on April 30, 1891 in Cumberland, Maryland, United States. Son of William E. and Mary (Concannon) Walsh.
Walsh, James Edward was born on April 30, 1891 in Cumberland, Maryland, United States. Son of William E. and Mary (Concannon) Walsh.
Student Maryknoll (New York) Seminary
He was the second child of nine. In 1915, he became the second priest ordained in this order. He and three other men were sent on the orders first foreign mission to in the year 1918.
French
Walsh and French Meyer arrived first, French Price and French Ford some weeks later. Their first point of debarkation in South was the British colony of Hong Kong on 30 October 1918.
While they were in Hong Kong, they stayed briefly with the Paris Foreign Mission Fathers at Battery From Hong Kong, they went to Yeungkong (now known as Yangjiang) and started their missionary work in there.
At the age of thirty-six, on 22 May 1927 he was consecrated a bishop for the Diocese of Kongmoon (now known as Jiangmen) in The ceremony was held on Sancian Island (now called Shangchuan Island), a lonely spot off the coast of South where Saint Francis Xavier, the Apostle to the Indies, died in 1552. However, following the Holy See"s special request for his service in, he returned to take charge of the Catholic Central Bureau in Shanghai in 1948 to coordinate mission activities in When the Communist Party of seized power in 1949 they began harassing Catholic clergymen.
The Catholic Central Bureau was shut down by the government in 1951. When Walsh"s superiors in Maryknoll inquired about his safety he responded by saying, "To put up with a little inconvenience at my age is nothing.
Besides, I am sick and tired of being pushed around on account of my religion."
Walsh was eventually arrested by the communists in 1958 and sentenced to twenty years in prison.
He spent twelve years of his prison sentence in isolation and was suddenly released in 1970. He was deported via a footbridge to freedom in Hong Kong on 10 July 1970. He became the last Western missionary to leave Communist after the Red "Liberation" in 1949.
Bishop James East. Walsh returned to the United States and died at the age of ninety on July 29, 1981 in Maryknoll, New New York