Tientsin [Tianjin], Diocese of

TIENTSIN [TIANJIN], Diocese of. - In the north-eastern part of the province of Hopeh, on the coast of the Yellow Sea.

It was erected as an apostolic vicariate, under the name of Maritime Chihli, on 27 April 1912, by division of the apostolic vicariate of Northern Chihli (v. PECHINO), and was entrusted to the Congregation of the Mission, which, for the apostolic work, sends there the religious of the province of Paris. On 3 December 1924 it took the name of T., and on 11 April 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China, it was elevated to a diocese, suffragan of Peking. It has an area of about 12,500 sq km. As of 30 June 1947, out of a total population of about 3,500,000 inhabitants, Catholics numbered 50,000; priests 85, of whom 46 were Chinese; major seminarians 5, minor seminarians 25; lay brothers 32, of whom 14 were Chinese; sisters 132, of whom 70 were native. Among the works were 4 hospitals, 3 medicine dispensaries, 2 orphanages, 1 home for the aged, 20 schools with 6,743 pupils. In T. there was also located the Tsinkou Catholic University, run by the Jesuits, which in the academic year 1946-47 had 721 students.

In the middle of the last century, on the present territory of T., there was no priest with a fixed residence: the approximately 200 Christians scattered over it were visited only periodically by missionaries from Peking. Around 1858 the Chinese priest Siu was sent there, who, having a reputation as a skilled physician, was able to settle in the city of T. as a pharmacist and secretly instructed and baptized; but, once discovered, he was imprisoned and forced into complete inactivity. In 1869 a church was built at T., but the following year it was burned, during a new persecution in which the Chinese priest Ou, Fr. Chevrier and 10 sisters Daughters of Charity were slaughtered. Other grave massacres occurred in 1900 through the work of the Boxers, but in 1903 the Christians numbered 3,345, rising to 31,898 in 1911, the year preceding the erection of T.

Adamo Pucci