By the late Fr Aedan McGrath MSSC

Fr Aedan McGrath died suddenly two years ago on Christmas day. He was a veteran missionary from China as our story will show but he also spent many long years here in the Philippines promoting the Legion of Mary and a movement called INCOLAE, which sent lay missionaries from the Philippines to Oceania. While in China his passing friendship with the famous film star, Loretta Young, turned out to be a blessing which would help to save many lives. Read the letter which sixty years later or more he sent to Loretta. It will explain everything.

Dear Loretta,
 

You have no reason to remember me, but I have many reasons to remember you and your name, because your name as a famous film actress, and as one working for the Church (especially with Father Peyton), helped to solve one impossible problem I had in my parish in China about 1939.

I was then about 30 and I am now 94! But I did have the good fortune to meet you in Hollywood when visiting there. I even knelt beside you in the chapel during Benediction, and we did have a little chat.

I am a Columban Father (and you may have met some of them in Los Angeles). I have spent most of my life in China. (My heart is still there.) About 1939 the Japanese forces which came through Nanking – and behaved badly there – then proceeded to my area, and all young women had reason to be frightened.

My bishop was poor and I never had a church or a house, but I lived where I could here and there. On the approach of the Japanese, the women in the town were terrified and appealed to me to protect them – the only foreigner in the town. I told them I had no house and no money. They replied, “We don’t need your money and we will find you a house” – which they did with a wall around it. But I was at a loss what to do and could only beg the thousand or so women who fled to the house to beg God to do something.

On the morning after the entrance of the Japanese I went down to the General to beg protection. He refused to see me and the interpreter only laughed at me. I felt all was lost and I returned to the house with the bad news. On the way (God’s ways are strange), an ordinary soldier called me to have a chat. (He wanted to practice his poor English.) I grasped at this straw. I told him I was a priest with refugees – women. The nearby soldiers became very excited as they could not find the women anywhere. When this man heard my story he left me and I would say that he returned to the General to say that there was an Irish priest in the town and was warned by him to be careful after their bad name in Nanking.

He returned and asked me to bring him to the church premises. At first sight he saw hundreds of women and was amazed. (I still had not an idea what to do.) I brought him to my little room where there was an old broken gramophone. He remarked, “You like music.” The he asked, “You like movies?” I replied that I did. His third question was vital, “You like Loretta Young?” I replied that I did like Loretta, and that she was in fact a personal friend of mine.

That was that. He got so excited and laughed hysterically and kept repeating, “You know my Loretta Young, a friend of yours!” He really lost control of himself. It was evident that he admired your movies and you particularly, and it took some minutes for him to become calm again.

He asked me for a big sheet of paper and Chinese ink and brush. He wrote two or three large characters and then from his back pocket took a Red-Seal and stamped the paper and said, “Put that on the gate, and if you ever get anymore trouble send up the boy to bring me down.” Several times he came and solved my problems.

He was the one Japanese officer who could have done that for me. I have always considered it a miracle.

Dear Loretta, that was the end of my trouble. Those women could not leave that house for six months, and yet no soldier dared to climb the wall or enter the compound. The gratitude of those women can only be imagined.

There were only a few Catholics amongst them but many Protestants. During that six months my five groups of the Legion of Mary were busy instructing that whole house full of women, and before they left most of them were baptized Catholics with the menfolk and families. That was a true story in every detail.

China was full of problems, and so I did not return home to Ireland for 16 years. Of course, when people asked me about China the highlight was the story of Loretta Young. How often did people ask me, “Have you written to Loretta yet?” As you can see I never got around to it. I am now 94 and still busy with the Legion of Mary all over the Philippines and Asia. Only last week an American Sister phoned me to ask if I had ever written Loretta Young. And I had to say, “I am afraid that I have neglected that duty.” “Well,” she said, “do it before it is too late for you.”

So at last I have got down to doing something about it. My most sincere apologies for not having let you know about it, but the Lord will not forget it.

At 94 I am still healthy and able to move about the Asian countries on my work. People ask me why have I not written a book and my same reply is that I have been too busy on my job to take the precious time for it.

I hope to enclose with this letter a cassette tape which was made in Dublin last year. It repeats what I have written and might amuse you.

May God and Mary keep you in good health and reward you here and hereafter for the miracle which your good name worked in an impossible situation.

Father W. Aedan SSC