Reunion in Peking

The Walsh brothers, James and William, were only a year apart in their family of nine brothers and sisters. They were inseparable while they grew up in Cumberland, Md. and later at Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, where they both graduated in the class of 1910. Fortnight ago they saw each other in a Communist jail in Peking--for what will almost certainly be the last time on earth.

Twelve years ago, just before the fall of Nationalist China, Roman Catholic Bishop James Edward Walsh went back to China (after 18 years of missionary work there) as executive secretary of the Catholic Central Bureau, coordinating Catholic missionary, cultural and welfare activities. In 1955, when offered repatriation with 21 other Americans, he refused. Last March the Communists announced that Bishop Walsh, 69, had been sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for espionage and conspiracy. His brother, Judge William Concannon Walsh, 70, who still lives in Cumberland, applied for a visa to visit him. One morning early in July, a cable from Peking granted the request.

Bringing a gold rosary sent by Mount St. Mary's, as well as vitamins, candy bars, clothes, and a box of cigars, Judge Walsh was shown into his brother's prison, where a grey-clad official lectured him on what was permitted--no mention of the trial, no notes, discussion limited to family matters. The rosary was forbidden; only "necessities" might be given to prisoners.

Flanked by two guards, a prison official and an interpreter, the two brothers met across a table and began, awkwardly at first, to chat. The bishop said he shared a cell in the hospital section with a 40-year-old Chinese who could speak English, that he received Chinese English-language papers, that he tried to keep in shape with morning calisthenics--"we did the same exercises with Papa." No, he had not been allowed to say Mass since his arrest 22 months ago.

And so it went for half an hour--and during two other visits. During their last meeting, the bishop said gently: "Nobody likes to be confined, but I'm not unhappy. Let's leave the future in the hands of God." When his brother was taken away by the guard, Judge Walsh watched him from the window of the visitors' room as the bishop crossed the courtyard to his cell. The judge called to him, and the bishop stopped, looked back and waved. "So long, James," the judge said.

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