{"id":34187,"date":"2016-10-28T11:32:20","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T15:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/?p=34187"},"modified":"2016-10-28T11:32:20","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T15:32:20","slug":"from-prime-minister-to-benedictine-abbot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2016\/10\/from-prime-minister-to-benedictine-abbot\/","title":{"rendered":"From Prime Minister to Benedictine Abbot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Lou-Tseng-Tsiang.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-34188 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Lou-Tseng-Tsiang-182x300.jpg\" alt=\"lou-tseng-tsiang\" width=\"182\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Lou-Tseng-Tsiang-182x300.jpg 182w, https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Lou-Tseng-Tsiang.jpg 466w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 182px) 100vw, 182px\" \/><\/a>The last pre-communist prime ministers of China, Lou Tseng-Tsiang (12 June 1871 \u2013 15 January 1949) a robust thinker, diplomat, spiritual and religious man converted to the Catholic faith from Protestantism and became a Benedictine monk, and lived with the hope of bringing a robust Catholic life to China.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0early life of Lou Tseng-Tsiang was spent as a domestic and international diplomat having achieved proficiency in French and Russian. Following the\u00a0death of his wife, Berthe Bovy, he retired; in 1927 became a postulant at the Benedictine Abbey of Sant\u00a0Andre (Bruges, Belgium) taking the name Dom Pierre-C\u00e9lestin; he was ordained priest in 1935.<\/p>\n<p>Pope Pius XII honored\u00a0Dom Pierre-C\u00e9lestin\u00a0in\u00a0August of 1946\u00a0by bestowing on him the honor of being the titular abbot of the Abbey of St. Peter, Ghent. In 1945, Abbot Pierre-C\u00e9lestin published his memoirs, <em>Souvenirs et pens\u00e9es<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>A fine introduction by Frank Weathers <a href=\"http:\/\/yimcatholic.blogspot.com\/2010\/09\/for-witness-of-dom-lou-tseng-tsiang.html\"><strong>can be found here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Dom Pierre-C\u00e9lestin\u00a0himself wrote about his faith journey in these words: &#8220;My conversion is a vocation. God led me, and He called upon me. My task for myself has, then, been extremely simple. It was enough for me to recognize what I saw, what events and circumstances, and the grace of God plainly showed me, and, to this constant and clear vocation, to respond by fulfilling the first duty of conscience, which is to obey God.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last pre-communist prime ministers of China, Lou Tseng-Tsiang (12 June 1871 \u2013 15 January 1949) a robust thinker, diplomat, spiritual and religious man converted to the Catholic faith from Protestantism and became a Benedictine monk, and lived with the hope of bringing a robust Catholic life to China. The\u00a0early life of Lou Tseng-Tsiang was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2016\/10\/from-prime-minister-to-benedictine-abbot\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">From Prime Minister to Benedictine Abbot<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[32089],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34189,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34187\/revisions\/34189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}