The Church and Yu-Jen

The groundbreaking ceremony, led by Bishop William Kupfer

Built by the Belgian CICM Fathers, run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Tianzhong

Yu-Jen's school buildings were built with funds raised by priests of the Belgian Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CICM), and the school is run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Tianzhong, Changhua. Besides parish work and social service such as caring for the elderly, the Sisters are devoted to education. Their schools include Yu-Jen Elementary School, Wen-Hsing High School, a high school in the Philippines, Sacred Heart Kindergarten in Tianzhong and Yu-Jen's preschool and special education classes.

The CICM was founded by Father Théophile Verbist, and the Chinese people were the first people it served: the congregation began its mission in Inner Mongolia in 1867. In 1949, CICM priests moved to Taiwan. In 1966, while serving in Taichung, the CICM Fathers felt a deep need to build a church and a Catholic elementary school to spread the love of Jesus Christ. That is how Yu-Jen came to be founded.

Buying the land: Father Jerome Heyndrickx and Father Ignace Rybens

Father Jerome Heyndrickx, a Belgian, was the first CICM missionary to serve in Taichung. Arriving on 31 October 1957, he had served in Taiwan for forty years by the time of Yu-Jen's 30th anniversary. Those forty years were busy, but full of good memories. The ones he treasured most were the years from 1959 to 1964, working alongside many friends in Taichung, which he called the best years of his life.

When the CICM decided to build a church and an elementary school, Father Heyndrickx, then serving in Taichung, set out to raise funds. First he collected telephone directories from every part of Belgium. He wrote a letter explaining the needs of the mission in Taichung, asked his students in Taichung to copy out the addresses one by one, and then sent out tens of thousands of letters. He also wrote to hundreds of Catholic schools in Belgium, and to thank their students for helping, he sent them thousands of Taiwanese stamps. He kept sending stamps for many years, and thirty or forty years later, Belgian friends still tell him about the stamps they received.

By the end of 1962, a small fund had been raised, and Father Heyndrickx rode his motorcycle all over Taichung looking for a site for the church and school. Worried that local people would find out a foreigner wanted to buy their land, he never dared to stop at a promising plot. He could only steal a glance at the lie of the land as he rode past. After many trips back and forth, he settled on today's site on Shuangshi Road. The land belonged to the Fengyuan Bus Company, and after long negotiations, the Church asked an elderly Taiwanese parishioner, Mr. Chen, to buy it on its behalf, at NT$600 per ping.

Soon afterwards, Father Heyndrickx left Taiwan to study in France. Father Ignace Rybens took over his work, carried on the fundraising, and became the first parish priest of the Shuangshi Road church.

Naming the school: Father Mathias Wang Yung-Ching

Father Wang Yung-Ching was a learned priest who completed his graduate studies at the University of Leuven in Belgium. On the ship home, he met two priests: the Canadian priest who would later found Viator High School, and the Belgian priest who founded Hua Ming Bookstore. Through them he became close friends with the Belgian Fathers.

Father Wang first helped found Kuang-Jen Elementary School, serving as its chairman, and then helped found Yu-Jen. In choosing a name, he felt that "jen" (benevolence) is the basic spirit of the Church, and that schools founded by the CICM should share a common character. Several names ending in "jen" were considered, among them Pei-Jen, Huai-Jen and Chung-Jen, and in the end "Yu-Jen," "nurturing benevolence," was chosen as the name closest to the heart of education. And so the school's name was settled.

With Father Wang's guidance and involvement, and the paperwork of Mr. Liu Ting-Hsin, the school was registered with the provincial education department in July 1967 without difficulty. It opened with two first-grade classes and five kindergarten classes. When the building was completed, Father Wang, as chairman of Kuang-Jen, invited the Kuang-Jen Elementary School children's band to play at the celebration.

Building the school: Father Ivo Stuyk

Father Stuyk was quick-tempered, quick-witted, clever, full of humor, and caring toward those who worked with him. In 1966, the CICM provincial superior put him, then thirty years old, in charge of building both Kuang-Jen High School in Banqiao and Yu-Jen Elementary School in Taichung. As a young man he had volunteered to serve in China. A lover of classical music, he hoped to train musicians for Taiwan, and founded the Kuang-Jen music program.

In 1966, Father Stuyk returned to Taiwan from the United States with a master's degree in education and began planning the founding of Yu-Jen. Kuang-Jen High School in Banqiao was being built at the same time, and he travelled back and forth between the north and the middle of the island, which was very hard work. Yu-Jen's first building was paid for with donations he raised by writing more than ten thousand letters to Catholics in Europe and America. What touched him most was a third-grade class at a Catholic elementary school in New York: led by their teacher, Sr. Ruth, the children saved their pocket money, donated eighty US dollars and sent a photo of the whole class.

Besides overseeing construction, before Yu-Jen opened Father Stuyk went to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Tianzhong, Changhua, and invited them to run the new school. He arranged for two Sisters, Sister Dolores Chang Li-Feng and Sister Consolata Yang Shu-Nu, to observe and take part in the work of Kuang-Jen Elementary School and nearby public schools to gain experience. He also cared deeply about good teachers: after the school opened, he personally went to Taipei Women's Teachers College to recruit Ms. Yang Hsiu-Luan to teach at Yu-Jen.

In 1995, Father Stuyk returned to Belgium because of illness. Yet in every letter and every phone call to Taiwan, he asked warmly about everything at Yu-Jen, and the building of the new campus in recent years was especially close to his heart.

Thirty years on

Yu-Jen's first building, built on farmland

For more than thirty years, Yu-Jen has grown strong under the leadership of its principals and the hard work of all its teachers and staff, with the care of the Board of Directors, the Belgian CICM and the Parents' Association. One of the CICM's principles is that once an institution it founded has matured, it is handed over to the local Church, so that the congregation can move its people to where they are most needed. So in 1987, Yu-Jen came to be run entirely by Taiwanese Sisters.

Looking back at the past and thinking about the present, Yu-Jen owes all that it is today to the devotion of those who came before. Foreign priests, in the self-giving spirit of Jesus Christ and with love for the Chinese people, built Yu-Jen brick by brick. And friends and students overseas, who knew little about this faraway Eastern country, gladly gave their pocket money to the Taiwanese children their priests and teachers told them needed help.

When you drink water, remember its source; when you eat the fruit, honor the tree. Yu-Jen has grown from a seedling into a great tree. As we rest safely in its shade today, let us never forget the work of those who came before us.