KANGTING, DIOCESE OF. — In west-central China. It comprises independent Tibet or Sitsang, the Tibetan Marches or Sikang, and the district of Weisiting in the province of Yunnan. It was established as an apostolic vicariate, under the name of Lhasa (later also called Tibet), with territory detached from the apostolic vicariate of Tibet-Hindustan, on 27 March 1846. It was entrusted to the Society of the Foreign Missions of Paris. On 3 December 1924 it took the name of the 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., by which the city of Tatsienlu had already been known for some time.
The Tibetan territory measures 1,200,000 sq. km., and the properly Chinese territory 160,000 sq. km. On 30 June 1949 the total population was estimated at 4,000,000 inhabitants (3,500,000 Tibetans and 500,000 Chinese); there were 5,475 Catholics and 223 catechumens. In addition to the bishop, there were 13 missionaries from Paris, one of them Italian, and 6 Chinese secular priests; at Weisi there were also 7 Canons Regular of St Augustine (Great St Bernard), while at Mosimien the Friars Minor maintained a leprosarium directed by 4 fathers and 3 lay brothers, all Italians. The minor seminary had 10 students; 1 student of Latin and 2 theologians were studying for K. at Kunming. The auxiliary personnel consisted of 54 sisters, 37 of them Chinese and Tibetan; 21 catechists, 39 teachers, and 22 baptizers. The territory, divided into 2 rural deaneries, had 16 primary stations with the missionary in residence and 13 secondary stations, 5 churches, and 21 chapels. Its institutions included 2 hospitals with 60 beds; 5 orphanages with 54 residents, 2 homes for the elderly with 29 residents; 1 leprosarium with 253 patients; and 9 medical dispensaries. The 10 elementary schools had 301 children, and the 2 teacher-training schools 8 students; the 16 schools of prayer and elementary instruction had 358 pupils.
In the territory of K., the penetration of Christianity is particularly difficult, especially in the Tibetan region. Around the middle of the last century, Fr. Renou reached Kiangkha, in the territory of Lhasa, and around 1880 Fr. Desgodins founded a small Christian community at Pedong; but, given the severity of the Chinese prohibitions, both were subsequently forced to withdraw, as was also the case with the apostolic vicar Thomine-Desmasures (1857–62). In 1946 the small Christian community of Yerkalo, at the border between Tibet, Sikang, and Yunnan, on properly Chinese territory and founded by Frs. Desgodins and Biet in 1865 with the faithful expelled from Tibet, after numerous 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, a Canon Regular who had remained to assist the surviving faithful, was massacred.