KONGMOON (JIANGMEN), DIOCESE OF. — On the lower coast of the civil province of Kwangtung, in southern China. Erected as an apostolic prefecture on 31 Jan. 1924, by division of the apostolic vicariate of Canton, and entrusted to the Society for Foreign Missions of the United States (of Maryknoll), whose fathers had been on the spot since the end of 1918, on 3 Feb. 1927 it was elevated to an apostolic vicariate and on 11 Apr. 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China, to a diocese suffragan of Canton.
It has an area of about 40,000 sq km. As of 30 June 1950, out of a population of about 4,000,000 inhabitants, Catholics numbered 8,292 and catechumens 536. Besides the bishop, there were 28 Maryknoll fathers and 11 Chinese secular priests. In the preparatory seminary 9 students were studying, in the minor seminary 14, and in the regional one, with its seat in Hong Kong, 4. The auxiliary personnel consisted of 2 American Maryknoll brothers, 38 sisters of whom 10 were American Maryknoll sisters and the rest Chinese; 67 catechists, 52 teachers, 2 doctors and 8 nurses. The stations with a resident missionary were 23; without a stable residence, 195; the churches 3 and the oratories 27. Among the works were 1 hospital with 50 beds, 20 medical dispensaries, 6 orphanages with 185 inmates, 1 home for the aged with 10 residents, a leper asylum with 202 infected, 1 house for the blind with 26 sheltered, 6 reading rooms for students. The schools were: 9 elementary with 707 children, 1 middle school with 219 pupils, 9 of prayer and first elements with 127 listeners.
The first Christian communities in the territory of K. were founded in the last twenty years of the past century through the work of Fr. Flereau, of the Foreign Missions of Paris; the American missionaries had to suffer and two of them were killed during the Japanese occupation from 1940 to 1945; today (1950) three Chinese priests are in prison under false accusation.
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Adamo Pucci