NANNING, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - The civil province of Kwangsi, in southern China, was detached on 6 Aug. 1875 from the apostolic prefecture of Kwangtung (v. CANTON) and itself erected as an apostolic prefecture, and on 6 June 1914 raised to an apostolic vicariate.
In 1922 it ceded 4 civil sub-prefectures for the erection of the mission of Lanlung (v.); on 3 Dec. 1924 it took its name from the city of N., the capital of the province and the seat of the Ordinary, and on 30 June 1930 it ceded 9 civil sub-prefectures for the erection of Wuchow. With the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China, on 11 Apr. 1946, N. was elevated to metropolitan see of the ecclesiastical province of Kwangsi, with the diocese of Wuchow as suffragan. It is entrusted to the Society for Foreign Missions of Paris.
It has an area of about 120,000 sq km. As of 30 June 1949 it counted over 6,000,000 inhabitants, of whom Catholics numbered 7,584. With the archbishop worked 17 foreign priests and 10 Chinese; 50 native sisters and 13 foreign. Among the works: 1 hospital, 2 orphanages and 10 medical dispensaries; 30 elementary schools. In the province there is a high percentage of aboriginal population. The preaching of the Gospel, begun in the second half of the last century, if it was not openly persecuted, nevertheless met with continual opposition from the local civil authorities. In 1856 Fr. Auguste 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.
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Adamo Pucci