A married Catholic laywoman of Hebei province killed with kinswomen and neighbors during the anti-Christian violence of the Boxer Uprising in 1900.

Saint Anna An Jiaoshi was a Chinese Catholic laywoman from Anping County in Hebei (then called Zhili) province, part of the missionary territory known as the Vicariate of Southeastern Chi-Li. Married, and by tradition around twenty-five years old at her death, she belonged to a Catholic village community that came under attack during the Boxer Uprising of 1900, when bands of Boxers, often with the tacit or active support of local authorities, targeted Chinese Christians for death because of their faith. On July 11, 1900, she was killed at Liugongying in Shenzhou, along with other Catholics of the district, including women who shared her surname and were very likely her relatives. She is one of a large number of Chinese lay Catholics — men, women, and children — martyred that summer, whose deaths were later gathered together in a single canonization honoring the faith of ordinary Catholic families in North China.

Quick Facts

• Born: traditionally dated to around 1874 (exact year uncertain), in Anping County, Hebei, China
• Died: July 11, 1900 (around age 25), at Liugongying, Shenzhou, Hebei, China
• Feast Day: July 9, with Saint Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions
• Beatified: April 17, 1955, by Pope Pius XII
• Canonized: October 1, 2000, by Pope John Paul II
• Patron of: lay Catholics of China and Christian family life under persecution

Who Was Saint Anna An Jiaoshi?

Very little survives about Anna An Jiaoshi’s life beyond the fact of her Catholic identity, her marriage, and the manner of her death. She lived in Anping County, part of the Apostolic Vicariate of Southeastern Chi-Li, one of the areas of North China where French and other missionaries had established a network of village parishes over the previous century. Chinese Catholic communities of that time and place were typically organized around extended families who had inherited the faith across generations, worshipping in small chapels and maintaining the practice of the faith often at real social cost within a wider non-Christian society. Anna An Jiaoshi is recorded as a married laywoman, and the surname she shares with a companion martyr, Anna An Xingshi, killed at the same place on the same day, suggests the two women were kinswomen, though sources are not always precise about the exact relationship. When Boxer violence reached Shenzhou in the summer of 1900, Catholics who refused to renounce their faith and reject Christianity were killed outright; Anna An Jiaoshi died at Liugongying on July 11, 1900, one of many such deaths recorded across Hebei province that year.

Historical Setting

The Boxer Uprising of 1899–1901 was a violent anti-foreign and anti-Christian movement in North China, driven by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists (the Boxers) and, at critical moments, tolerated or actively supported by the imperial Qing court under the Dowager Empress Cixi. Chinese Christians — the great majority of the movement’s victims, far outnumbering the foreign missionaries who are often better remembered — were targeted as agents of foreign influence and as apostates from Chinese tradition. Hebei province, dense with Catholic mission villages built up over decades by European missionary congregations, saw some of the worst violence, with entire Christian communities killed, forced to renounce their faith, or driven from their homes in the space of a few months in the summer of 1900. It was in this climate that Anna An Jiaoshi and her companions in Anping and Shenzhou lost their lives.

Why the Church Venerates Saint Anna An Jiaoshi

The Church venerates Anna An Jiaoshi as one of the ordinary Chinese Catholic faithful who died specifically because they would not abandon their baptism, even at the cost of their lives, during a moment when renouncing Christianity was, for many, a real and immediate way to save themselves. Unlike missionary martyrs whose deaths are often documented in detailed correspondence, the deaths of lay Chinese Catholics like Anna An Jiaoshi are venerated precisely because they represent the fidelity of whole families and villages, not just of clergy or religious — a witness the Church has been intentional about recognizing as equal in dignity to any other martyrdom.

Canonization and Feast Day

Anna An Jiaoshi was included among the first group of Chinese martyrs beatified by Pope Pius XII on April 17, 1955. She was later canonized by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 2000, together with 119 other martyrs of China spanning several centuries of persecution, collectively known as Saint Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions. Their shared feast day is celebrated on July 9. As with many of her fellow martyrs, no personal miracle is recorded for her individually; the canonization of the group rested on the Church’s judgment that their deaths met the definition of martyrdom in hatred of the faith.

What Catholics Can Learn Today

Anna An Jiaoshi’s story, told in only a few surviving lines, is a reminder that most of the Church’s martyrs throughout history have been unnamed or nearly unnamed in the wider historical record, known chiefly to God and to the small communities that treasured their memory. Her witness invites Catholics today to value the quiet, undocumented fidelity of ordinary believers — a mother, a neighbor, a member of a rural parish — as no less significant than more famous forms of holiness, and to recognize that entire families and villages have, within living historical memory, chosen death over apostasy.

A Prayer to Saint Anna An Jiaoshi

Saint Anna An Jiaoshi, faithful daughter of the Church in Hebei, who would not deny the faith you were given even when death stood before you, pray for the Christians of China, seen and unseen, who still hold to Christ amid pressure and fear. Intercede for families torn by persecution, that they may find in you a sister who understood their cost. Obtain for us the same quiet courage that let you choose Christ over safety, so that our own smaller fidelities may be made strong. Amen.

Sources

• Vatican.va, canonization homily of Pope John Paul II, October 1, 2000
• the Roman Martyrology
• Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent), entries on the Boxer Uprising and the Chinese martyrs
• EWTN