By Gianni Criveller PIME
On Friday 29 November 2019, I was in Milan, few minutes away from the commencement of an important event in which I was invited to talk about Hong Kong’s anti-government demonstrations. A colleague approached me informing me that few hours earlier the same day our common friend Divine Word missionary Roman Malek has passed away. The news kind of mesmerised me, and I felt moved to tears. As I started my speech, I was still thinking about him, and I thought that while I was reporting the struggle of Hong Kong people, I was somehow paying a private homage to Roman Malek. It was indeed Hong Kong where we first met in middle 1990s.
We met also in Macau, China, Taiwan, Belgium, Italy, Sankt Augustin (Germany) and again, in Hong Kong. We became friends and collaborators attending symposiums on China and Christianity and working on common projects.
When Malek proposed the multi-volumes major project of The Chinese Faces of Jesus, he was kind enough to refer to my Preaching Christ in Late Ming China as a reading that inspired him.
A dozen of years ago, he proposed me to produce together a Festschrift in honour of PIME Father Angelo S. Lazzarotto. He was adamant that the project had to include the world’s best scholars on Chinese Christianity and, at the same time, keep it a secret, at least to Fr Lazzarotto. Not an easy task. After some hesitation, I accepted. Lazzarotto deserved the recognition, but I especially felt honored that my name could be associated to the one of Roman Malek. For a couple of years we remained in contact nearly on daily basis. We also spent together 10 days in Sankt Augustin, the SVD headquarter in Germany, working on this and other projects.
In 2016, a two-volume Festschrift in honour of Roman Malek was presented to him in Sankt Augustin. I was happy to contribute with a paper on the Chinese Rites Controversy, but unfortunately, I could not attend the event. I wished very much to make it up for that absence, visiting him sometime soon, especially in consideration that, since 2011, Roman was suffering the consequences of a serious stroke.
In my mind, one of the most unforgettable event with Roman Malek took place in Brescia (Italy) — the hometown of great Jesuit China missionary Giulio Aleni— on September 12, 2007. In the magnificent municipal palace in Piazza della Loggia, before a numerous public and city authorities, Roman Malek presented the two volumes of The Diary of Oral Exhortations, A Late Ming Christian Journal, the 1630s’ diary that registered Aleni’s missionary activities. Elisabetta Corsi and Tiziana Lippiello were also speakers at the event, that I had the honour of presiding over. Malek was the publisher, while the Dutch scholar Erik Zürcher was the translator from Chinese and the commentator. It was a major academic achievement for the study of “mission in action” in Late Ming China. Quite remarkably, Dutch Erik Zürcher, one of the greatest sinologist of 20th century, spent the last years of his life completing this task, under the direction of Roman Malek. It was great, that day and evening, enjoying “learned and late conversations” with scholars like Zürcher and Malek. It was Zürcher’s last public appearance, as he passed away few months later.
I like to remember Roman Malek as a person “larger than life”. He possessed a strong charisma and will, and had a hardworking lifestyle. He was quite direct and bold in stating his positions. Many China watchers still remember an episode of public divergence in which Malek rebuked a Vatican official (Hong Kong, middle 1990s).
Malek was also fun and fun loving. His passion for mission, China and history will not be forgotten by the many that enjoyed his friendship and benefitted by his scholarly achievements.
Last summer our academic community lost Gary Tiedemann, another dear friend and colleague on the study of Chinese Christianity. I feel indebted to both of them, persons that I respected, not only for their academic output, but also for their human qualities. This is my humble homage to them.
Roman Malek was born in Bytów, Poland, on 3 October 1951. He entered the Society of the Divine Word in 1969 and moved to Sankt Augustin in 1976. He studied Sinology, Japanology, comparative religious studies and Church history at the University of Bonn. In 1992, he was appointed director of the Monumenta Serica Institute and editor-in-chief of its publications. He worked hard, publishing 20 volumes of the journal Monumenta Serica and 75 titles of the monograph series.
He organised numerous exhibitions and international conferences; published extensively and was a visiting professor at several universities in Europe and taught at the Theological Faculty of Sankt August and at Boon University. From 1988 to 1998 he was the Director of the China-Zentrum (Sankt Augustin).
In April 2011, a severe stroke put the brakes on many of his multiple projects. Despite his physical limitations, he continued to work on several book projects, among them two supplementary volumes of the book series The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ, vols. 4a and 4b, published in 2015 and 2019, respectively.
On the occasion of his 65th birthday in October 2016, Father Malek was presented with a two volume Festschrift entitled Rooted in Hope: China – Religion –Christianity in an official ceremony in Sankt Augustin.
In April 2018 he moved to the SVD house in Górna Grupa, in his native Poland, where he passed away on 29 November 2019.
