This is a photograph of Fr. Escalante at the Chinese mission at Sha Ha Ka'aw [Sandy River Mouth.] Two Chinese girls kneel before him and a young man stands next to him. 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.
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