HONG KONG. — British colony consisting of several islands (the two largest being Hong Kong and Lantau) and a stretch of the adjacent Chinese coast of Kwangtung, opposite Macao: 1,013 sq km with 1.8 million inhabitants (all Chinese except for 7,000 British), of whom 450,000 are concentrated in the capital Victoria (on the first island), a very busy hub of trade with southern China. GIUSEPPE CARACI
DIOCESE OF HONG KONG. — Comprises the eponymous British colony on the southern coast of China and the three districts of Poon, Waichow, and Hoifung in the civil province of Kwangtung. Erected as an apostolic prefecture on 22 April 1841, immediately after the founding of the British colony, it initially included only the territory of the colony itself, which until then had been part of the Diocese of Macao, and was administered by *pro tempore* procurators of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide, the last of whom, the Veronese Fr Luigi Ambrosi, in 1858 called to his aid the priests of the Seminary for Foreign Missions of Milan, who in 1867, upon Ambrosi’s death, also took over the direction of the prefecture. In 1874, the prefecture was elevated to an apostolic vicariate with the addition of the three aforementioned districts on the mainland, which until then had belonged to the Apostolic Prefecture of Canton. On 11 April 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China, Hong Kong was raised to the status of a diocese, a suffragan of Canton.
It covers an area of 16,000 sq km. As of 30 June 1949, the total population was approximately 4,000,000 inhabitants, of whom 37,146 were Catholics and 1,726 were catechumens. In addition to the bishop, there were 36 priests and 2 lay brothers of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions of Milan, as well as 21 Chinese secular priests. There were 30 minor and 3 major seminarians at the regional seminary for Kwangtung and Kwangsi, located in Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island and entrusted to Irish Jesuits. There were also 44 catechists, 506 teachers, 9 doctors, and 45 nurses. The territory was divided into 4 districts with 12 parishes, 17 primary stations, and 129 secondary stations, 15 churches, and 180 chapels. Among the institutions were 6 hospitals with 374 beds, 6 medical clinics that in the 1948–1949 fiscal year had provided 60,702 consultations; 4 orphanages with 81 boys and 325 girls; 1 old people’s home with 286 residents. The schools, from elementary to secondary, numbered 100 with 15,140 pupils, in addition to 4 prayer schools with 723 attendees and 7 kindergartens with 1,221 children. There were also 2 printing houses for the publication of books, weeklies, and monthly magazines in several thousand copies. In these manifold charitable and educational works, the bishop of China was assisted by 20 priests and 15 lay cooperators of the Salesians, 16 Brothers of the Christian Schools, and 383 nuns belonging to ten different institutes. Furthermore, the Paris Foreign Missions Society and Maryknoll each maintained a procuracy in Hong Kong, with 12 and 4 priests respectively at the date mentioned; the Dominicans had a procuracy and a house of study with 28 fathers, and the Friars Minor had transferred their Biblical Institute, previously in Peking, to Hong Kong with 9 fathers.
The island of Hong Kong only gained importance after the British occupation (1840), and the first priests soon arrived to minister to the many soldiers, mostly Irish Catholics, who, due to the harsh climate, were dying without a priest to administer the sacraments. The missionaries of the Milan Seminary, aided by the Sisters of St Paul of Chartres and the Canossians of Verona, opened schools, provided assistance to the soldiers, and attended to the sick in the large military hospitals in the area. In 1859, they extended their work to the Chinese on the mainland, where, on the coasts of what is now the district of Poon, Frs Volontieri and Burghignoli established a Christian community of 350 souls distributed across 12 small centers; later, preaching was brought to the other two districts of Waichow and Hoifung. Now, the mainland portion, which in the five-year period 1927–33 had suffered particularly in the district of Hoifung—with looting of Christian communities, the capture of missionaries and nuns, and the massacre of 200 Christians by Bolsheviks—is again under Communist rule, while the territory under British administration is overpopulated due to the large number of refugees and suffered greatly during the Second World War when it was occupied by the Japanese.