Pechino, Archdiocese of

PECHINO, ARCIDIOCESI di. – P., a city in the province of Hope, formerly the capital of China, is rich in monuments of ancient Chinese civilization. The events concerning the spread of Christianity up to the middle of the last century are narrated under the heading Cina (Enc. Catt., vol. III, cols. 1656–71, where, under the heading Arte cristiana, cols. 1669–71, several Christian monuments of the place are also mentioned). On 30 May 1856, after the diocese of P. was suppressed, whose jurisdiction had been reduced to the sole civil province of Celi (or Chihli, today Hopeh), its territory was divided among the three apostolic vicariates of northern P., eastern P. and western P., which were subsequently designated respectively by the names of northern Celi, with its see at P.; east-central Celi, with the Ordinary’Sienhsien (v.); and south-western Celi, with the Ordinary’Chengting (v.). The first and third were entrusted to the Congregation of the Mission, the second to the Society of Jesus.

The first was repeatedly divided in order to establish the following ecclesiastical jurisdictions: eastern Celi, today Yungping, on 23 Dec. 1899; central Celi, Paoting (v.), on 14 Feb. 1910; maritime Celi, Tientsin (v.), on 27 Apr. 1912; and Suanhwaifu on 10 May 1926. On 25 May 1929 it ceded the district of San Puo, which, together with three civil subprefectures taken from Paoting, formed Yihsien (v.). On 3 Dec. 1924 it changed its name from northern Celi to P., and on 11 Apr. 1946 it was raised to a metropolitan archdiocese of the ecclesiastical province of Hopeh, with the suffragan dioceses of Ankwo, Chaohsien, Chengting, Paoting, Shunteh, Sienhsien, Suanhwa, Tientsin, Yungnien and

Yungping, to which Kinghsien and Tamig were added in 1947. On 25 May 1946, with the appointment of Card. Tien Kenhsin as archbishop, P. passed to the Chinese secular clergy.

It covers approximately 30,000 sq km. As of 30 June 1947, out of a total population of approximately 5,000,000 inhabitants, there were 215,918 Catholics and 1,756 catechumens; 75 Chinese secular priests, 63 Lazarists, 30 of them indigenous; 15 major seminarians and 50 minor seminarians. Auxiliary personnel: 8 lay Lazarist brothers, 7 of them Chinese; 71 Marist Brothers; 246 sisters; 105 catechists. In the territory, divided into 6 districts, there were 90 primary stations and 1,918 secondary stations, with 57 churches and 389 chapels. Fujen Catholic University, founded in 1924 at P. and entrusted to the American Benedictines, later passed to the Society of the Divine Word; it had 4 fa-

When, at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, the missions were resumed, all China was, ecclesiastically, under the Macao (v.). The advances achieved by the Jesuits and subsequently by the Dominicans (1631), the Franciscans (1633), the Augustinians (1680) and the priests of the Paris Foreign Missions (1683) induced Pope Alexander VIII, also petitioned by the Kings of Portugal, to erect two further dioceses: Nanchino and P. (10 Apr. 1690), suffragans, like the diocese of Macao, GOLA (v.). The civil provinces of P. (= Hopeh), Shantung, Lesotung (= Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea and Tartary), Shansi, Shenni, Honan and Szechwan were assigned to the diocese of P. But as early as 15 Oct. 1696 Innocent XII reduced the diocese of P. to the sole provinces of P., Shantung and Lesotung; on 9 Sept. 1831 Korea was detached, on 14 Aug. 1838 Mongolia, Manchuria and Tartary, and on 3 Sept. 1839 Shantung, so that P. was ultimately restricted to the sole province of Celi.

The Church of P. was not spared persecutions, during which the missionaries had to go into exile in Canton and Macao, where Msgr. Gioacchino de Souza Saraiva, C. M., also took refuge. He had been elected in 1808 and was the last bishop of the diocese; after his death (1818), four apostolic administrators succeeded him and governed it until 1856, the year in which it was suppressed. The mission was able to revive after 1860. – Vedi tav. LXXV.