Abstract This article examines the intellectual formation of Johannes Schütte, Superior General of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) and a central figure in the drafting of Ad Gentes Divinitus , the Second Vatican Council’s 1965 decree on mission. Drawing on Schütte’s missionary writings and SVD archival materials, this article argues that his decade in China – which ended in imprisonment and expulsion by Communist authorities in the early 1950s – decisively shaped his vision of Catholic reform. Branded an agent of Western imperialism, Schütte came to recognize what he called “grains of truth” in Communist critiques of the missionary enterprise, pushing him to reassess the structural weaknesses of foreign-controlled mission work. The article further situates Schütte’s career within the broader history of decolonization: China’s revolutionary expulsion of missionaries functioned much like formal independence movements elsewhere, accelerating institutional and theological change within the Church. By insisting that the Church take root in local cultures rather than reproduce Western forms, Ad Gentes turned the lessons of missionary failure into a new ecclesiological program. In tracing Schütte’s trajectory, the article contributes to three areas of scholarship: the long history of decolonization, the relationship between Cold War anti-Communism and Catholic reform, and the role of China in the global history of twentieth-century Christianity.
Albert Wu (Wed,) studied this question.