SHOHCHOW, DIOCESE of. — In the northwestern part of Shansi province, in northern China.
It was erected as an apostolic prefecture on 12 May 1926, comprising 15 Taiyuan (v.), and entrusted to the Order of Friars Minor, which sends there, for missionary work, religious from the Bavarian regular province of S. Antonio di Padova; on 17 June 1932 it was elevated to an apostolic vicariate and then to a suffragan diocese of Taiyuan on 11 Apr. 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China. It has an area of 25,000 sq. km. On 30 June 1948, out of a total population of 1,300,000 inhabitants, there were 11,000 Catholics, with 25 foreign Franciscan priests and 3 Chinese secular priests; 4 German Franciscan lay brothers and 10 nuns, also German, 2 minor-seminary students and 3 major-seminary students. The catechists, teachers, and baptizers had been dispersed, and the schools closed. The Christians were divided among 21 primary and 62 secondary stations, with 11 churches and 27 chapels; among the institutions, only 1 orphanage with 52 residents and 1 home for the elderly were still operating.
Christianity in the territory of S. began to develop only from 1877, through the work of Chinese priests sent there by the apostolic vicariate of Shansi: among them, who heroically endured the Boxer persecution (1900), the Rev. Giuseppe Chang died by being burned alive. The Bavarian Franciscans arrived there in 1922 and worked effectively, but all their activity was brutally brought to an end by the latest events: as of 16 Oct. 1948, the aforementioned personnel had been dispersed outside S., and the institutions, already partly suspended, had been completely closed.