Catholic Missions, Medicine, and Miracles in Rural North China: The Story of the Blessed Assunta Maria Pallotta

The literature on the medical activities of Christian missionaries in early twentieth century China describes their contributions to the development and promotion of modern bio-medicine.  This paper, in contrast, argues that some missionary medical institutions were in fact promoting supernatural forms of healing which were both international in their reach and closely linked to traditional Chinese folk remedies.  Assunta Maria Pallotta (1878-1905) travelled to China as a member of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary.  There she spent two years working in the kitchens of an orphanage before succumbing to typhus.  Her death was accompanied by a miraculous scent of roses, which drew large crowds.  Shortly afterwards an ambitious young Italian bishop took control of the diocese with plans both for the development of Western-style schools and hospitals and also for the promotion of Pallotta as the diocese’s first saint.  An Italian doctor was employed to run a hospital and provide evidence for the incorrupt state of Pallotta’s corpse.  When the doctor left the unqualified nuns took over the clinic and continued their efforts for Pallotta’s beatification by promoting Pallotta and especially fragments from the coffin in which she had first been buried as a source of cures.  Such fragments were sent out by mail to America, Italy and Egypt.  They were also taken by local Chinese who boiled them in water which was then given to the sick person to drink.  Cures by these means persisted after the missionaries were expelled in the 1950s, continued throughout the Cultural Revolution when Pallotta’s corpse was dug up and destroyed, and are still common today in the area.  The miraculous cures were associated with globalisation and scientific modernity (the Italian doctor’s presence was necessary to medically attest Pallotta’s sanctity) but they were supernatural in their methods and deeply rooted in local folk practices.