The first Chinese Bishop from the Province of Gansu, Monsignor Philip Yang Libo was born into a Catholic family in a poor mountain village in Gulang county. Entering the junior seminary in Wuwei and later the major seminary in Lanzhou, he was ordained priest in 1949. China soon imposed restrictions on the local Catholic Church, with Father Philip finding himself in prison by 1952, spending repeated periods in prison and labor camps throughout the rest of his life. Released in 1979, Yang Libo was secretly consecrated bishop of Lanzhou, an appointment which was never recognized by the Chinese government. Devoting himself to preparing priests and nuns for the religious life, he was again arrested in 1983. Released in 1987, he played a part in the formation of a clandestine Catholic Bishops' Conference becoming one of the CBC's vice-presidents. Held for several months for "shelter and investigation", he was assigned without charge or trial to three years' re-education through labor in a detention center in Lanzhou. Released on parole at the end of 1992, by the time of his death in 1998, Bishop Yang Libo had spent more than thirty years of his nearly half a century of priestly life in prison.
The first Chinese Bishop from the Province of Gansu, Monsignor Philip Yang Libo was born into a Catholic family in a poor mountain village in Gulang county. Entering the junior seminary in Wuwei and later the major seminary in Lanzhou, he was ordained priest in 1949. China soon imposed restrictions on the local Catholic Church, with Father Philip finding himself in prison by 1952, spending repeated periods in prison and labor camps throughout the rest of his life. Released in 1979, Yang Libo was secretly consecrated bishop of Lanzhou, an appointment which was never recognized by the Chinese government. Devoting himself to preparing priests and nuns for the religious life, he was again arrested in 1983. Released in 1987, he played a part in the formation of a clandestine Catholic Bishops' Conference becoming one of the CBC's vice-presidents. Held for several months for "shelter and investigation", he was assigned without charge or trial to three years' re-education through labor in a detention center in Lanzhou. Released on parole at the end of 1992, by the time of his death in 1998, Bishop Yang Libo had spent more than thirty years of his nearly half a century of priestly life in prison.
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