Francis Xavier Ford
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The Servant of God, the Right Rev. Francis Xavier Ford, M.M. |
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| Bishop of Kaying (Meizhou) | |
Bishop Ford in 1951
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| Installed | April 11, 1946 |
| Term ended | February 21, 1952 |
| Other posts | Vicar Apostolic of Kaying (1935–1946) |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | December 5, 1917 |
| Consecration | September 21, 1935 by Bishop James Anthony Walsh, M.M. |
| Personal details | |
| Born | January 11, 1892 Brooklyn, New York, United States |
| Died | February 21, 1952 (aged 60) A prison in Guangzhou, China |
| Buried | location unknown |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Maryknoll Seminary |
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Styles of Francis X. Ford |
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| Reference style | The Right Reverend |
| Spoken style | Your Excellency |
| Religious style | His Excellency |
| Posthumous style | Servant of God |
Francis Xavier Ford, M.M., was an American bishop of the Catholic Church and a Maryknoll missionary in China. Because of his torture by the Communist Chinese and death in prison in 1952, he is considered a martyr, and the cause for his canonization has begun, granting him the religious title of Servant of God.
Ford was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Austin Brendan Ford and Elizabeth Rellihan Ford. He attended Cathedral College in Elmhurst, Queens. While studying there, he felt a call to respond to the vision of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, just founded in 1911 by the Catholic bishops of the United States for overseas service. Upon completion of his high school studies, he was accepted by the Society.
When Ford reported to the Maryknoll seminary in Ossining, New York, on 14 September 1912, he became the first student of the fledgling Maryknoll Society. He was the first person to matriculate in this institution. He was ordained on December 5, 1917, and became one of the first four American Catholic priests to arrive in China in 1918.
Francis Xavier Ford's cousin, Maryknoll sister Ita Ford, was one of four Catholic churchwomen who were tortured, raped and murdered in El Salvador by members of a military death squad on December 2, 1980. She had previously worked with the poor and war refugees as a Maryknoll Sister missionary in Bolivia and Chile.
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