Vatican City, Jul 16, 2025 /
17:15 pm
Originally from China, Shushu arrived in Spain in 2016 at just 23 years of age with the sole purpose of studying the history of the Spanish language. What she didn’t imagine was that she would have a transformative encounter with Christ Crucified, which would lead her to embrace the Catholic faith.
“We have no merit; it’s all because the Lord guides us. His mercy is immense,” said Shushu in an interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, at the shrine of Our Lady of Covadonga in Spain.
The young Chinese mother was there with her husband Josemi and son, Emmanuel, to share the testimony of her conversion from atheism to Catholicism before thousands of young people gathered July 4 for the opening of the Marian Eucharistic Youth Day (JEMJ, by its Spanish acronym).
It all began on Oct. 31, in the city of Alcalá de Henares. Shushu had only been in Spain for a month and had attended a Halloween party, drawn by curiosity and the festive atmosphere. However, the grotesque zombie costumes, the clatter of chains dragging along the floor, and the shrill, mournful music disturbed her.
Restless and overwhelmed in her heart, she decided to leave and walk in no particular direction until she came upon the imposing Sts. Justus and Pastor Cathedral, where she began to hear almost heavenly music that contrasted drastically with the uneasiness she had just experienced.
Drawn by that melody, she decided to enter the church, and it was then that her eyes fell upon an image of Christ Crucified. She stood there transfixed, and the encounter marked a turning point in her life. “There was a very large cross, and I saw Jesus there, and it had a great impact on me,” she told ACI Prensa.
She related that her childhood was spent in a profoundly atheistic environment, typical of communist China, where neither her family nor her closest friends believed in or spoke of God.
Despite this, when she looked at the cross, she thought: “There is a person on the cross. And by supernatural intuition, I thought it was God, that God himself was on the cross, and it couldn’t be anyone else,” she said.
The priest looked at her like a father
Overwhelmed by a sense of peace, she decided to approach a confessional to speak with a priest, unsure of what the Sacrament of Reconciliation consisted of.
When she finished speaking, she thanked the priest for listening to her, and as she was about to leave, the priest opened the screen in the confessional: “And he looked at me with a very special look,” Shushu recounted during the testimony she shared at the JEMJ.
She said the priest looked at her like a father would and that gave her “a lot of confidence.” She had the feeling that he had been waiting for her for a long time, and he was the one who introduced her to the Servants of the Home of the Mother, who would become her new “Spanish family.”
“I didn’t know anything; I’d never seen a nun in my life,” Shushu recalled with humor and a certain aplomb. She commented that the nun’s “angelic” happiness caught her attention: “I’d never seen someone so happy, so joyful, so young. I decided to convert after meeting the nuns,” she recounted.
‘I wanted to be a daughter of God’
At one point one of the nuns took her hand and asked, “Do you want to be baptized?” To which she replied, “What does it mean to be baptized?”
“She told me that being baptized means ‘being a daughter of God, like us.’ At that moment, I didn’t understand anything, nor did I know why a Chinese woman could be a daughter of God or why God is my Father,” she explained.
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However, the happiness emanating from the faces of the nuns at the Home of the Mother convinced her. “It was as if I felt this calling in my heart: I wanted to be baptized too, I wanted to be like them, a daughter of God.” Finally, she was baptized with the name Shushu María.
Her path to conversion was not easy, marked by the difficulties inherent in growing up in a deeply atheistic environment.
However, she managed to move forward thanks to the close guidance and witness of the sisters, whose support was key in her being able to open her heart to the faith.
“I was baptized in the same church where I first entered, and I was also married there,” she said, in front of the crucifix where she had first encountered Jesus Christ.
Today, at 32, she stated with conviction that Spain is her “spiritual homeland” and the place where she was baptized and began “a new life.”
She also felt extremely grateful to be able to share her testimony at the shrine in Covadonga, “the heart of Spain and a very important place in its history.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Almudena Martínez-Bordiú is Rome correspondent for ACI Prensa and EWTN.
