Biography
Anna Wang
About Anna Wang
Pope John Paul II’s 2000 canonization homily calls her “Young Ann Wang” and says she was fourteen. He recalls that she resisted her torturers’ demand that she abandon her faith, then faced execution with the words “The door of heaven is open to all” and repeated “Jesus.” The homily places her among the Chinese martyrs recognized at the ceremony, but it does not give her birth village, exact dates, or the surrounding events of her arrest.A University of Notre Dame educational biography supplies a fuller, later account. It gives her birth as 1886 in Xingtai, Hebei, and says she was born to Catholic parents. It describes her devotion as a child and says she sheltered in a Catholic school with other women as the Boxers approached. This source is a modern educational summary rather than a contemporary deposition, so details beyond those independently recalled in the papal homily are presented as its account.The papal homily and Notre Dame account agree that Anna remained Catholic under threat and was killed during the 1900 persecution. The Holy See does not give her exact dates; Notre Dame’s educational account places the execution the day after July 21, but no contemporary record is cited there to corroborate that day. Neither source establishes a precise village-level birthplace. Her Roman Catholic observance is shared with the Chinese martyrs on July 9 in Notre Dame’s calendar resource.
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