KONGMOON (KIANGMEN), Diocese of. — On the lower coast of the civil province of Kwangtung, in southern China. Erected as an apostolic prefecture on 31 January 1924, by division of the apostolic vicariate of Canton, and entrusted to the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll), whose fathers had been on the ground since the end of 1918, on 3 February 1927 it was raised to an apostolic vicariate and on 11 April 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China, to a suffragan diocese of Canton.
It covers an area of approximately 40,000 sq. km. As of 30 June 1950, with a population of approximately 4,000,000 inhabitants, there were 8,292 Catholics and 536 catechumens. Besides the bishop, there were 28 Maryknoll fathers and 11 Chinese secular priests. In the preparatory seminary there were 9 students, in the minor seminary 14, and in the regional seminary, based in Hong Kong, 4. Auxiliary personnel consisted of 2 American Maryknoll brothers, 38 sisters (10 American Maryknoll and the rest Chinese), 67 catechists, 52 teachers, 2 doctors, and 8 nurses. There were 23 mission stations with resident missionaries, 195 without a stable residence, 3 churches, and 27 oratories. Among the works were: 1 hospital with 50 beds, 20 medical dispensaries, 6 orphanages with 185 residents, 1 old people’s home with 10 guests, 1 leper colony with 202 infected, 1 home for the blind with 26 residents, and 6 reading rooms for students. The schools included: 9 elementary schools with 707 children, 1 middle school with 219 pupils, and 9 prayer and elementary instruction groups with 127 attendees.
The first Christians born in the territory of K
. were founded in the last two decades of the past century by Fr. Flereau of the Paris Foreign Missions; the American missionaries suffered greatly, and two of them were killed during the Japanese occupation from 1940 to 1945; as of 1950, three Chinese priests are in prison under false charges.