This is a photograph of Frs. Gilbert and Escalante with a group of Christian families. Fr. Alonso M. Escalante was born in Merida, Mexico, educated in Catholic Schools in Mexico and the United States. He entered Maryknoll Preparatory Seminary in 1920 and was ordained a Priest on February 1, 1931. His missionary labors took him to Fushun, Manchuria, China and later to the Pando, Bolivia. In 1943 he was named by the Holy See as Vicar Apostolic of the Pando and Titular Bishop of Sora. He was consecrated a Bishop in Mexico City on May 9, 1943. In 1948, at the request of the Mexican Hierarchy, he was assigned to assist in the organizing of a Foreign Mission Seminary and Society for Mexico. He was the Mexican National Director of the Pontifical Mission Aid Societies, a member of the Commission and Post-Conciliar Commission on the Missions, and President of the Mexican Episcopal Commission on the Missions. He was in Hong Kong in 1967 to secure mission territory for his Mexican Priests, when he caught typhoid fever and died on June 21, 1967. -- Rev. Gilbert was born in Grosvenordale, CT. He entered The Venard, Maryknoll's Apostolic College in 1917 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1927 and assigned to Fushun, Manchuria. He became adept at Mandarin, and after a year's home leave in 1935, he returned to Fushun. He was interned by the Japanese in 1941, and repatriated on the refugee ship Gripsholm in 1943. He worked for a year in U.S. Japanese internment camps. Afterwards he remained in the U.S. doing promotion work.
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