KANGTING, Diocese of. — In central-western China. It comprises independent Tibet or Sitsang, the Tibetan Marches or Sikang, and the district of Weisingt in Yunnan province. It was erected as an apostolic vicariate under the name of Lhasa (later also called Tibet), with territory taken from the apostolic vicariate of Tibet-Indostan, on 27 March 1846. It is entrusted to the Paris Foreign Missions Society. On 3 December 1924 it took the name of apostolic vicariate of Tatsienlu; on 11 April 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China, the apostolic vicariate was elevated to a suffragan diocese of Chungking under the name of K., which was already the name of the city of Tatsienlu.
The Tibetan territory measures 1,200,000 sq. km., the territory properly Chinese 160,000 sq. km. By 30 June 1949 the total population was estimated at 4,000,000 inhabitants (Tibetans 3,500,000; Chinese 500,000); Catholics numbered 5,475 and catechumens 223. Besides the bishop, the Paris missionaries numbered 13, of whom one was Italian; Chinese secular priests numbered 6. At Weisi there were 7 Augustinian canons (Great St Bernard); at Mosimien the Franciscans ran a leper hospital directed by 4 fathers and 3 lay brothers, all Italian. The minor seminary had 10 students, 1 Latinist and 2 theology students studying for K. at Kunming. Auxiliary personnel included 54 sisters, of whom 37 were Chinese and Tibetan; 21 catechists, 39 teachers, and 22 baptizers. The territory, divided into 2 deaneries, had 16 primary stations with a missionary in residence and 13 secondary ones, 5 churches and 21 chapels. Among the works were 2 hospitals with 60 beds; 5 orphanages with 54 residents; 2 old people’s homes with 29 residents; 1 leper hospital with 253 patients; and 9 medical dispensaries. The 10 elementary schools had 301 children, the 2 teacher-training schools 8 students, and the 16 prayer and first-elements schools 358 listeners.
In the territory of K. the penetration of Christianity is particularly difficult, especially in the Tibetan region. In the mid-19th century Fr Renou reached Kiangkha in the territory of Lhasa, and by 1880 Fr Desgodins had founded a small Christian community at Pedong, but owing to the severity of Chinese prohibitions both were later forced to withdraw, which also befell the apostolic vicar Thomine-Desmasures (1857–62). In 1946 the small Christian community of Yerkalo, on the border between Tibet, Sikang and Yunnan, in territory properly Chinese and founded by Frs Desgodins and Biet in 1865 with faithful expelled from Tibet, after repeated persecutions in the years 1873, 1877, 1887 and 1905, was destroyed by the lamas—mortal enemies of the Christian religion—and in 1949 Fr Tournay of the Augustinian Canons, who had remained to assist the surviving faithful, was massacred.