Katharina Feith
On January 7, 2025, Sister Agnes Lee of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, resident in Taiwan, passed away. She was in lively exchange with the China-Zentrum for many years, especially in connection with the training program for Chinese sisters in Germany.
Lee Chwen Jiuan (Li Chunjuan 李純娟) was born on August 8, 1941, in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan. Her parents were from Tainan County. Alongside nine half-siblings, she had one older sister, a younger sister – Sr. Veronica, who entered the same order – and a younger brother from the same mother. Their mother died when Agnes Lee was in the third year of junior high school.
One of her half-sisters put her into contact with the Catholic Church and the SMIC sisters, who ultimately prepared her and her two full sisters for baptism. All three were baptised on Easter 1958, and received the sacrament of confirmation the following September. After completing senior high school, Agnes Lee joined the international missionary order. She began her novitiate in May 1961, and was sent to the United States in late 1962 to continue it. She took her first vows on May 21, 1963, in Wes Paterson, New Jersey. In June 1967, she completed her studies with a major in philosophy and a minor in English literature at New York’s St. Bonaventure University. In February 1968, Sister Agnes returned to Taiwan and was assigned to the provincial convent in Tainan, where she immediately began teaching at the Catholic Sheng Kung Girls’ High School and took on the role of a formation directress. On August 2, 1968, she took her perpetual vows.
In the 1970s, living through the Catholic Church’s continuing development in Asia, Sister Agnes advocated for the localisation of churches. In 1975, she participated in a spiritual retreat in Bangkok, Thailand, where she became deeply conscious of the importance of a lively, contemplative life for Asian sisters. In 1976, at the suggestion of theologian Fr. Aloysius Chang Ch’un-shen SJ (1929–2015), she used her role as formation directress to lead discussion circles and exercises on the inculturation of spirituality. She organised retreats on Far Eastern spirituality, practiced Tai Chi, visited pioneers who in Japan had concerned themselves with the inculturation of spirituality, founded the Center of Eastern Spirituality within her order’s province, published on Chinese spirituality, participated in daily exercises in local Buddhist monasteries, studied with a Zen master (Chen Sheng-Hua) in Kaohsiung, and spent three months practicing Zen in Japan.
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