SHOHCHOW [SHUOZHOU], 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 with 15 civil sub-prefectures of Taiyuan (v.) and entrusted to the Order of Friars Minor, which for the missionary work sends there the religious of the Bavarian regular province of St. Anthony of Padua; on 17 June 1932 it was elevated to an apostolic vicariate and then to a diocese suffragan of Taiyuan on 11 April 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China. It has an area of 25,000 sq km. As of 30 June 1948, out of a total population of 1,300,000 inhabitants, Catholics numbered 11,000 with 25 foreign Franciscan priests and 3 Chinese secular priests; 4 German Franciscan lay brothers and 10 nuns also German, 2 seminarians of the minor course and 3 of the major. The catechists, teachers and baptizers were dispersed, the schools closed. The Christians were divided into 21 primary and 62 secondary stations with 11 churches and 27 chapels; of the works, 1 orphanage with 52 inmates and 1 hospice for the aged were still functioning.
Christianity in the territory of S. developed only from 1877, through the work of the Chinese priests sent there by the apostolic vicariate of Shansi: among them, who heroically withstood the persecution of the Boxers (1900), the rev. Giuseppe Chang died burned alive. The Bavarian Franciscans arrived on the spot in 1922 and worked effectively, but all their activity was brutally cut short by the latest events: on 16 Oct. 1948 the aforementioned personnel had been dispersed outside S. and the works, already partly suspended, were completely closed.
Bibliography5 works
Adamo Pucci