SINKIANG, APOSTOLIC PREFECTURE of. - It comprises the civil province of the same name, also called Chinese Turkestan or Eastern Turkestan, in north-western China.
It was erected as a mission sui iuris on 14 February 1930, being detached from the territory Lanchow (v.), and was entrusted, like the mother mission, to the religious of the Society of the Divine Word; on 21 May 1937 it was raised to an apostolic prefecture.
It has an area of 1,828,000 sq. km. On 30 June 1947, out of a population of more than 4,000,000 inhabitants, there were 471 Catholics and 16 catechumens. Besides the apostolic prefect, there were 11 foreign and 2 Chinese priests, 1 foreign lay brother, and 2 Chinese nuns. Its institutions included 1 primary school.
ASIA (v.), in the sixth century, the Nestorian heretics advanced as far as the province of S. and founded an archiepiscopal see at Kashgar. Also from Sian, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a Chinese priest periodically visited, after a journey of 6,000 km. there and back, the 300 faithful who formed the community of Korree, where in 1860 the Rev. Tommaso Chang was assigned; he followed the Catholics into their exile at Kuldja, after Korree was taken by the Muslims (1864). Some forty Christians survived the general massacre carried out by the rulers; they did not yield even to the blandishments of the Orthodox priests, who entered S. after the Russian occupation (1871). In 1922 the Verbit religious succeeded the Scheut missionaries in the administration of the apostolic vicariate of Kansu, now Lanchow.