DELLA CHIESA, BERNARDINO. - Franciscan, bishop of Beijing, b. in Venice on 8 May 1644, d. in Lintsing on 21 Dec. 1721. Consecrated titular bishop of Argos (1680), he was sent to China.
His special mandate was to reconcile Bishop Francesco Pallu with his missionaries, whom the latter had suspended "a divinis" and thus rendered unfit for the apostolate. Despite Pallu's protests, Bernardino lifted the suspension imposed on the 25 missionary fathers, appealing to Rome. The matter would have been settled that same year, had Pallu, by dying, not created as his apostolic vicar Gregorio Lopez, whom the French missionaries stubbornly refused to recognize. D. C. peacefully composed this dispute as well, by the territorial division of the region. To Lopez he assigned Nanjing as his see and as secretary Father Giovanni-Francesco Nicolai, later made bishop, keeping for himself the provinces of Tze-Kiang, Hukwang, Szechidan and Kwei-chow, and choosing as his companion visitor Father Basilio da Gemona, afterwards apostolic vicar in Shensi. Far more troublesome questions were stirred up for him on the part of the king of Portugal, Peter II, over the right of patronage that the latter claimed in those missions: for which reason he was appointed by him bishop of Nanjing (1692) and then, even before the bulls arrived from Rome, transferred to the see of Beijing. He reached it in 1700, but could not establish his residence there, because he was unwelcome to missionaries of a different Order and nation, indeed not even to his own confreres of Shantung, on the pretext that they were exempt from episcopal jurisdiction. He therefore went to live in the city of Lin-tsin-chow, in a private house, about 500 km. from his episcopal see, into which nevertheless he made his way from time to time in secret to administer Holy Confirmation. Always beneficent, yet always persecuted and slandered, he ended his life as a solitary. He was buried in the field of a Christian by his faithful friend Father Carlo Orazio da Casterano.
BIBL.: sources