TINGCHOW, DIOCESE of. — In the southwestern part of Fukien province, in southern China.
It was established as an apostolic prefecture on 27 December 1923, with the civil subprefecture of the same name, detached from the apostolic vicariate of northern Fukien, which on that same date assumed the name of apostolic vicariate of Foochow. On 8 May 1947 it was raised to a diocese, suffragan to Foochow. From the beginning it has been entrusted to the Dominicans of the regular province of Cologne. It covers an area of approximately 20,000 sq km. On 30 June 1947, out of a total population of approximately 2,000,000 inhabitants, there were 3,711 Catholics and 365 catechumens; 22 priests, 1 of them Chinese; 1 major seminarian and 10 minor seminarians; 5 lay brothers; and 22 nuns, 4 of them indigenous. The institutions included 1 hospital, 8 dispensaries, 9 orphanages, and 22 schools with 1,316 pupils.
The first evangelical preaching in the territory of T. dates back to the seventeenth century: in 1663 the Jesuits of Foochow counted 800 Christians in T., where Fr. Giulio Aleni had built a church, which was subsequently burned during the persecution, and the Christian community almost disappeared as well. It was able to be revived two centuries later, in 1880, by Fr. Bernon, of the Paris Foreign Missions, who settled at Hapahi, where he remained until 1891. In that same year Fr. Giacomo Garcia, O. P., and the Chinese priest Vincenzo Kiang arrived; the latter returned to Foochow almost immediately. In 1900 Fathers Bienes and Martin, together with other Dominican confrères, found only 52 Catholics throughout the territory: fairly substantial progress began in 1912. During the first years of its autonomous existence, the missionaries encountered major obstacles because of the Communists, who were already infesting that area; the resumption of the work and the considerable development that subsequently took place were cut short by the great war between China and Japan, which placed the German personnel of the mission in a difficult and dangerous position.