CATTANEO, ANGELO. - Of the Institute for Foreign Missions of Milan, first apostolic vicar of southern Honan (China), born at Carvico (Bergamo) in 1844, died at Chumatiens (China) on 13 Dec. 1910. After exercising the ministry in the diocese, in 1869 he entered the Institute for Foreign Missions of Milan, whence he departed that same year for Honan.
He studied the Chinese language passionately, into which he translated the catechism, ascetical booklets, catechetical instructions, and Gospel explanations; and he worked tirelessly, devoting himself especially during the famine of 1877–78. In 1884 he was appointed pro-vicar of the new mission of northern Honan, where he strove to build chapels and schools and to train catechists and priests. Having returned, after ten years, to his southern mission, he became its procurator and then pro-vicar. For the work of pacification carried out after the revolution of 1900, he was appointed a third-rank mandarin. Elected apostolic vicar in 1904, he immediately began pastoral visitation, which he repeated every year despite serious hardships. To him is due the beginning of the great hospital at Chumatiens, subsequently completed by the National Association for Italian Missionaries, and the further division of the vicariate with the missionaries of the Institute of Parma, whom he had guided in the early stages of their apostolate; he rebuilt the works destroyed by the revolution and founded new ones. A man of profound interior life, he devoted to prayer the time not occupied by the ministry.