CATTANEO, ANGELO. - Of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions of Milan, first Apostolic Vicar of Southern Honan (China), b. at Carvico (Bergamo) in 1844, d. at Chumatien (China) on 13 Dec. 1910. After exercising his ministry in the diocese, in 1869 he entered the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions of Milan, from which he departed the same year for Honan.
He studied the Chinese language with great passion, translating into it a catechism, ascetical booklets, catechetical instructions, and evangelical explanations, and worked indefatigably, devoting himself especially during the famine of 1877–78. In 1884 he was appointed provincial of the new mission of Northern Honan, in which he labored to build chapels and schools, to train catechists and priests. After ten years, he returned to his mission in the South, where he served as procurator and then as provincial. For his work in pacification following the 1900 revolution, he was named a third-degree mandarin. Appointed Apostolic Vicar in 1904, he immediately began a pastoral visitation, which he repeated every year despite great hardships. To him is owed the beginning of the great hospital at Chumatien, later completed by the National Association for Italian Missionaries, as well as the further division of the vicariate with the missionaries of the Parma Institute, which he had guided in the early days of his apostolate. He rebuilt works destroyed by the revolution and founded new ones. A man of profound interior life, he devoted to prayer the time not occupied by his ministry.