America's missionary crusader

Frater Clifford King (standing on the right) with his confreres after having received his missionary cross for China. (Source: Chicago Province SVD)

Fr. Clifford King was born in Upstate New York in 1888 and entered the SVD in Techny, IL in 1909, fulfilling his childhood desire of becoming a missionary. As a seminarian, he founded the Catholic Student Mission Crusade, which soon had thousands of members and about a million in 1963.

He was sent to China in 1919, still a "frater", to replace the German SVD missionaries who had been expelled during WWI. In 1920, the young missionary was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Henninghaus, making him the first American priest of the Society of the Divine Word. Msgr. Froewis, who would become a mentor to Fr. King, preached the ordination retreat about holiness, zeal, and learning as characteristics of a missionary.

Fr. King served in many Chinese missions over the next 20 years, only fleeing from the Japanese in 1941 as they approached Beijing. Having arrived in the Philippines, Father soon was forced to escape the Emperor's troops again, this time on a submarine! After the war, he became the secretary of Cardinal Tien, SVD, a position he held until 1960, when at the age of 72, he volunteered for a leper hospital in Papua New Guinea. "I will certainly be happy in New Guinea; because I will work among the poorest of the poor, and God's mercy will be close to us", he said about his new work.

Six years later, King returned to the States, where he wrote his autobiography "I remember" while serving as a chaplain in an Iowa hospital. "America's missionary crusader" died in Techny in 1969.

China remained his great love. He would often start conversations with the words "When I was in China".

May he have joined China's martyrs and saints in Heaven!