Among the black-tie dignitaries inching\u00a0forward to meet China\u2019s most powerful leader at a Washington gala in 1979 was a quiet, scholarly priest from Seton Hall University, Father Laurence T. Murphy. He was a man on a mission. China was cracking its door open after years of isolation, and he wanted Seton Hall to step through it.<\/p>\n
Father Murphy had spent a decade working in Washington, for both the U.S.\u00a0Conference of Catholic Bishops and the U.S. State Department, and when he heard about Chairman Deng Xiaoping\u2019s visit \u2014 a historic opening in relations between the two nations \u2014 he started contacting his old colleagues, looking for a way to meet the Chinese leader, however briefly. He managed to wrangle an invitation to a performance in Deng\u2019s honor at the Kennedy Center, as well as a spot in the receiving line.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wasn\u2019t at all interested in meeting me, but he was polite. And I said, \u2018Mr. Chairman, I would love to visit your country,\u2019\u201d Murphy says, recalling what he said through Deng\u2019s interpreter. \u201cHe was noncommittal. Then I said I\u2019d like to bring an academic delegation and he got interested\u00a0\u2014 \u2018We welcome academic delegations,\u2019 he said \u2014 because it turned out to be one of his top priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within just a few months of that meeting, four graduate students from Seton Hall\u2019s Asian Studies department\u00a0were studying in Beijing, and four Chinese scholars \u2014 two\u00a0chemists and two mathematicians \u2014 were on their way to Seton Hall, the first in a long line of students and faculty who have since traveled between South Orange and China. Father Murphy was named president of Seton Hall in the summer of 1979, and by June 1980, he was on the way to China himself, leading a delegation that included New Jersey Gov. Brendan Byrne.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were only two hotels for foreigners in Beijing then,\u201d he says. \u201cEverybody wore the same clothes \u2014 there was no Western dress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the people Father Murphy met were representatives of what remained of the Catholic Church in China: the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, established and supervised by a Communist government that wanted none of its citizens answering to Rome. It was after one of these meetings, a dinner with the bishop of Wuhan, that Father Murphy acquired a new and unexpected mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cHalf an hour after dinner, there\u2019s a knock on the door. It\u2019s the bishop. Not in garb, not even a ring. He came in the room, turned on the TV, turned on the water, pointed at the ceiling \u2014 everything\u2019s bugged,\u201dFather Murphy says. Bishop Dong Guangqing had a message he wanted delivered. He had been ordained a bishop by China, not Rome, but he wanted to affirm his allegiance to the pope. \u201cHe said, \u2018I\u2019m old now; I\u2019ve got to tell the Holy Father we\u2019ve always been completely faithful, never allowed anything in the diocese\u00a0that the Vatican would not approve.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Bishop Dong was reluctant when Father Murphy asked him to put his statement in writing, but \ufb01nally relented. \u201cOn two conditions: I had to keep that paper on my person at all times, and when I got to Rome it could only be given directly to the Holy Father,\u201d Father Murphy says. \u201cSo that\u2019s why I went to Rome.\u201d<\/p>\n
With that, a new chapter then opened in Father Murphy\u2019s life, a life that had already spanned both the globe itself and the epic events of the 20th century.<\/p>\n
As a boy at the parish school at Saint Peter\u2019s in Newark, and then at St. Joseph\u2019s in Roselle, Larry Murphy was certain about his vocation. He remained certain when he went to Seton Hall Prep, too. \u201cAs long as I could remember, I knew I was going to be Navy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
But when he graduated from Seton Hall Prep in 1935, in the middle of the Depression, appointments to the service academies were scarce. He joined the Navy Reserves, spent a year at a prep school in Annapolis, and \ufb01nally earned a spot at the Naval Academy. After graduating in June 1941, he was assigned to a battleship, the USS Oklahoma, but then was among a handful of young of\ufb01cers sent to the Washington Navy Yard to study the early electronic attempts at computers. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor a few months later, 429 men died on the Oklahoma.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a terrible time,\u201d says Murphy, who was quickly reassigned from Washington to a new battleship, the USS South Dakota. \u201cWe knew a lot of the young officers just ahead of us, and many of them were killed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the next four years, from the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands to Okinawa, from the South Paci\ufb01c to the North Atlantic and back, Murphy was in 18 major naval engagements. He survived kamikaze attacks on his ship, icy winter convoys across the North Atlantic to Murmansk (\u201cthe life expectancy if you went in the water was two minutes,\u201d he says), and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, the largest naval battle of the war.<\/p>\n
But peacetime tried his patience. Assigned to Guantanamo Bay, where ships went for training, he had little to do, and scarce hope of having more to do in the future. Murphy became friendly with a young Catholic chaplain, whose vocation seemed more inviting. \u201cI guess for the \ufb01rst time in my life the thought entered my head that maybe I might like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He left the Navy at the end of 1947 and began to study Latin and Greek at Seton Hall to prepare for the seminary.<\/p>\n
He was planning to attend the diocesan seminary at Darlington until a friend asked him for a ride up to Ossining to visit the Maryknoll seminary. \u201cOn the way back, I said to my Seton Hall friend, \u2018That\u2019s where I want to go.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Murphy was 35 when he was ordained in the Maryknoll chapel in 1954. His plans to serve in the order\u2019s Asian missions were thwarted by the three bouts of malaria he had endured in the war; he was advised, for his health, not to live in the tropics. He taught at Maryknoll College in Illinois and earned a Ph.D. in philosophy at Notre Dame, where he also taught and took students to Peru for eight summers as part of a program he started there, the Council for the International Lay Apostolate \u2014 \u201ca kind of summertime Peace Corps,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
In 1965, the order sent him to Washington, where he spent 10 years in a variety of in\ufb02uential positions with the bishops\u2019 conference and on State Department commissions. He returned to New Jersey in 1975 to be near his aging mother and taught philosophy at Seton Hall, where he soon found himself named president. (Murphy served as the 16th president of Seton Hall for a little over a year before stepping down, citing health issues.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI formally put his name in the hat as a contender for president,\u201d says Albert Hakim, who served as chairman of the philosophy department and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in his long career at Seton Hall. He \ufb01rst met Father Murphy when they were both young instructors after the war. \u201cIn the year and a half he was president, he made a marvelous contribution. It was a very thoughtful, personal style in running things.\u201d<\/p>\n
While on his visit to China in 1980, Father Murphy held tightly to Bishop Dong\u2019s letter. He then flew to Rome to meet the Vatican\u2019s main China expert, Archbishop Claudio Celli, who arranged for Father Murphy to concelebrate a Mass with Pope John Paul II. In a private 45-minute breakfast meeting after the Mass, Father Murphy presented the letter and told the pope what he had learned about the Church in China.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was fascinated by China and told me right then, the first time we ever met, he said, \u2018That\u2019s one of my first priorities. If I could go to China tomorrow, I would go,\u2019\u201d Father Murphy says.<\/p>\n
Father Murphy was about to fly home the hext day when he heard from Archbishop Celli. \u201cHe called me and said, \u2018The Holy Father was talking to me, and we would like to see if you could work for us in China.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
And so began a new career. \u201cMy job description was \u2018gofer\u2019 – bringing messages, instructions, sometimes money to different bishops around the country, and bringing back reports on what the situation was,\u2019 he says. \u201cIt was best to be quiet. If the Chinese government saw somebody officially doing it, they wouldn\u2019t allow it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He made more than 35 visits to Asia – mostly China, but also several other countries, including North Korea – over the next 15 years or so. Displayed in his room at the Maryknoll center, where he retired in 2010, is a photo of him presenting a stole from the pope to Cardinal Kung-Pin-Mei, the bishop of Shanghai who was imprisoned for 30 years. \u201cThe pope said, \u2018If you can see him, I want to send him a message,\u2019\u201d Murphy says about the 1985 visit. \u201cIt was very simple, just three things: I send you my apostolic blessing. I pray for you every day. I have absolute confidence in your faith, period.\u201d<\/p>\n
Father Murphy remained at Seton Hall while he traveled for the pope, living in China House, a residence he established for visiting Chinese scholars and students; serving as the director of the University\u2019s intercultural Asia Center; and always trying to keep the traffic moving through the door he had opened between China and the University.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s highly respected in China. says Yeomin Yoon, professor of finance and international business, who calls Murphy \u2018my mentor and my last remaining fatherly figure.’\u201d Yoon was recruited to Seton Hall from a high-paying post at AT&T by Murphy, who enlisted him to help run the Asia Center. \u201cThanks to his foresight, Seton Hall could establish academic relations with Chinese universities. I think Seton Hall owed him a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 98, Father Murphy no longer travels afar, but China is never far from him. At Maryknoll – where the fieldstone tower is capped by a pagoda-style roof, testament to the order\u2019s early Asian missions – he recently participated in the 25th anniversary symposium of the Chinese Church leaders to the United States for graduate study.<\/p>\n
And hanging over his desk in his room there is large, graceful piece of Chinese calligraphy, a gift from the late Bishop Duan In-min of Wanxian.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour visit,\u201d Father Murphy says, translating, \u201cis like a warm breeze.\u201d<\/p>\n
Written by Kevin Coyne<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Father Laurence T. Murphy, who taught at Seton Hall and briefly served as University President, helped forge a historic link between Seton Hall and China, starting in 1979.<\/p>\n