KUMMING, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - The civil province of Yunnan, in southwestern China, was detached from the mission of Szechwan and erected as an apostolic vicariate under the name of Yunnan on 28 August 1840, and was entrusted, as was the mother mission, to the Paris Foreign Missions Society.
On 28 July 1868 it ceded the district of Weixi to the mission of Lhasa or Tibet, Kangting (v.); on 22 November 1929 it lost 33 civil subprefectures, which were used to establish the present diocese of Tali (v.); and on 8 April 1935 another 11 civil subprefectures were detached to form the apostolic prefecture of Chaotung. On 3 December 1924 it took the name of apostolic vicariate of Yunnanfu, from the provincial capital, a city which in recent years reverted to being called K. On 11 April 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China, the apostolic vicariate of Yunnanfu was raised to the status of a metropolitan archdiocese, with Tali as its suffragan, and at that time it also took the name of K in ecclesiastical usage.
It covers an area of 150,000 sq. km. As of 30 June 1950, out of a population of approximately 8,000,000, there were 11,456 Catholics and 1,652 catechumens. Besides the archbishop, there were 24 missionaries from Paris; 22 Chinese secular priests; 5 priests, 2 brothers, and 1 clerical student of the Salesians; 2 foreign and 2 Chinese Sulpicians attached to the major seminary; 1 Camillian father and 2 brothers. The minor seminary had 36 students, the major seminary 10. Auxiliary personnel consisted of 19 foreign sisters, 75 Chinese sisters and 2 animators, 18 catechists, and 18 baptizers. The works include 3 orphanages with 261 children, 3 orphanages for boys with 175 residents, 1 hospice for the elderly with 338 inmates, 1 boys’ boarding school with elementary and secondary schools and 680 pupils, 1 girls’ boarding school, also with elementary and secondary schools and 467 students. There were also 8 elementary schools with 976 pupils, 3 secondary schools with 396 students, 2 kindergartens with 130 children, and 27 prayer and elementary instruction schools with 620 attendees.
The civil province of Yunnan, detached like many others on 15 October 1696 from the diocese of Nanking, was to have had its own apostolic vicar, but in fact had none, and, united with the province of Kweichow, passed in 1715 to the jurisdiction of the ordinaries of Szechwan, under whose care it remained until 1840. There were, moreover, very few Christians there. Under Mgr. Pérocheau, apostolic vicar of Szechwan from 1838 to 1856, there was only one Chinese priest in Yunnan, named Wang.