SHOCHOW, DIOCESE OF
In the north-western part of the province of Shansi, in northern China.
It was erected as an apostolic prefecture on 12 May 1926, comprising 15 civil sub-prefectures of Taiyūan (v.) and entrusted to the Order of Friars Minor, who for missionary work sent there religious from the regular Bavarian province of St Anthony of Padua. On 17 June 1932 it was raised to an apostolic vicariate and then to a suffragan diocese of Taiyūan on 11 April 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China. It covers an area of 25,000 sq km. As of 30 June 1948, with a total population of 1,300,000, there were 11,000 Catholics, served by 25 foreign Franciscan priests and 3 Chinese secular priests; 4 German Franciscan lay brothers and 10 German nuns, 2 minor seminarians and 3 major seminarians. Catechists, teachers, and baptizers were dispersed, schools were closed. The faithful were divided into 21 primary stations and 62 secondary stations, with 11 churches and 27 chapels; among the institutions still functioning were an orphanage with 52 residents and a hospice for the elderly with 1.
Christianity in the territory of Shochow developed only from 1877, through the work of Chinese priests sent by the apostolic vicariate of Shansi: among them, who heroically endured the Boxer persecution (1900), the Rev. Giuseppe Chang died burned alive. The Bavarian Franciscans arrived on the scene in 1922 and worked effectively, but all their activity was brutally halted by recent events: on 16 October 1948 the remaining personnel had been dispersed outside Shochow and the works, already partly suspended, were completely closed.