Anna Wang

Saint Anna Wang was a Chinese Catholic lay martyr who died during the Boxer Rebellion. She was born in 1886 in the village of Majiazhuang in Wei County, in the province then known as Zhili and now called Hebei, in northern China. She belonged to a Catholic family in a rural area where missionary activity in the nineteenth century had led to the formation of local Christian communities. Her mother died while Anna was still a child, and she was subsequently raised by her stepmother. From a young age she was known for her piety and regular participation in the life of the Church.

In 1900 the Boxer movement, whose members opposed both foreign influence and Chinese Christians, spread through northern China. In July of that year Boxers arrived in Wei County and seized local Catholics, including Anna Wang, then fourteen years old, together with members of her family. The captors demanded that the prisoners abandon Christianity, typically by trampling a crucifix or otherwise apostatizing, in exchange for their lives. Anna refused. Accounts preserved in later ecclesiastical investigations describe her as encouraging fellow prisoners, among them children, to remain faithful. She is reported to have insisted that she was a Catholic and would not deny her God.

Anna Wang was beheaded on 22 July 1900 along with her stepmother and other Catholics of the locality. Her death formed part of the extensive martyrdoms of Chinese Christians that took place across several provinces during the Boxer Uprising. After the uprising was suppressed, Catholic authorities collected testimonies about those who had died rather than recant.

Anna Wang was beatified by Pope Pius XII in 1955. She was canonized by Pope John Paul II on 1 October 2000 as one of the one hundred and twenty Martyrs of China, a group comprising eighty-seven Chinese Catholics and thirty-three foreign missionaries from various periods of persecution. The martyrs are commemorated together on 9 July. Saint Anna Wang, who never married and had no children, is venerated as an example of youthful courage and fidelity. Surviving information about her life is relatively brief and derives chiefly from the documentation assembled for her beatification and canonization.