NANNING, ARCHDIOCESE of. - The civil province of Kwangsi, in southern China, was detached from the apostolic prefecture of Kwangtung (v. CANTO) on 6 Aug. 1875 and itself erected into an apostolic prefecture; on 6 June 1914 it was elevated to an apostolic vicariate.
In 1922 it ceded 4 civil subprefectures for the ANLUNG (v.); on 3 Dec. 1924 it took its name from the city of N., capital of the province and seat of the Ordinary, and on 30 June 1930 it ceded 9 civil subprefectures for the erection of Wuchow. With the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China, on 11 Apr. 1946, N. was elevated to a metropolis of the ecclesiastical province of Kwangsi, with the diocese of Wuchow as its suffragan. It is entrusted to the Society for the Foreign Missions of Paris.
It has an area of approximately 120,000 sq. km. On 30 June 1949 it had more than 6,000,000 inhabitants, of whom 7,584 were Catholics. The archbishop was assisted by 17 foreign and 10 Chinese priests; 50 native and 13 foreign sisters. Its institutions include: 1 hospital, 2 orphanages, and 10 medical dispensaries; 30 elementary schools. There is a high percentage of aboriginal population in the province. Evangelical preaching, begun in the second half of the last century, though not openly persecuted, nevertheless encountered continual opposition from the local civil authorities. In 1856 Fr. Augusto Chapdelaine was killed, together with two Chinese Christians, in the city of Silin. Other victims occurred in 1897 and 1898. The progress of Christianity was therefore slow and slight.