TAIYŪAN, ARCHDIOCESE of. — In the centre of the province of Shansi, in northern China: it is the mother mission of all the missions of Shansi.
Erected under the name of the apostolic vicariate of Shansi on 3 March 1844, through the division of the apostolic vicariate of Shensi and Shansi, on 17 June 1890 it ceded the entire southern part, which was erected as the apostolic vicariate of Southern Shansi (v. LAON), and it took the name of the apostolic vicariate of Northern Shansi. On 14 March 1922 it ceded 6 civil TATUAGGIO (v.); on 3 Dec. 1924 it took the name of the apostolic vicariate of T.; on 12 May 1926 it was again Fenyang (v.) Shohchow (v.); finally, on 17 May 1931, it ceded 10 civil subprefectures to Yütze (v.). On 11 April 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China, it was elevated to a metropolitan archdiocese with the suffragan dioceses of Fenyang, Luan, Shohchow, Tatung and Yütze, to which Hungtung was added in 1950. From the beginning it has been entrusted to the Order of Friars Minor, which sends religious there for missionary work from the Roman regular province of the Most Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.
It has an area of approximately 16,000 sq km. On 30 June 1950, out of a total population of approximately 1,500,000 inhabitants, there were 40,429 Catholics and 67 catechumens, served by 48 churches and 155 chapels; there were 25 Franciscan priests, 4 of them indigenous, and 17 priests of the Chinese secular clergy; 10 major seminarians and 50 minor seminarians; 4 Chinese Franciscan clerical students and 4 lay brothers, 1 of them indigenous; 52 sisters, 39 of them Chinese; 11 catechists, 28 teachers, 9 baptizers, 3 doctors and 8 nurses. The institutions included 1 hospital, 8 dispensaries, 2 orphanages, 2 homes for the elderly and 14 schools with 1,222 pupils. The regional seminary for the missions of Shansi is located near T.
Although in the 7th–8th centuries the preaching of the Nestorian heretics reached the area from the neighbouring province of Shensi (v. SIAN), and in the 14th century that of the Franciscans Giovanni da Monte Corvino and Odorico da Pordenone, the present-day Church of Shansi dates back to the preaching of the Jesuits at the beginning of the 17th century. The Kiangchow (v.) by the Jesuit Giulio Aleni in 1620 and at T. by the Jesuit Trigault in 1635. At the end of the century (on 15 Oct. 1696), Shansi was united with Shensi in a single apostolic vicariate and entrusted to the Franciscans, the first of whom to reach T., in 1725, was Fr. Francesco M. Garretto; other confrères advanced in the years 1742 and 1755 as far as the Great Wall and beyond. Persecutions then slowed the missionary work, which was able to resume around 1840 and led to the divisions mentioned above, as well as to the foundation, in 1893, of a convent with a Seraphic novitiate for fostering indigenous vocations to the religious life. The Boxer persecution of 1900 was particularly bloody in the mission of T., where the apostolic vicar, Msgr. Gregorio Grassi, and his coadjutor, Msgr. Francesco Fogolla, fell, together with the missionaries Elia Facchini, Teodoro Balat and Andrea Bauer, 7 Franciscan Missionaries of Mary sisters, 5 seminarians and 9 domestic servants, all beatified on 24 Nov. 1947. Seven Chinese priests, 1 mandarin and 1,400 faithful also perished. After the storm came peace, reconstruction and the revival of the mission.