Tsinchow [Tianshui], Diocese of

TSINCHOW [TIANSHUI], DIOCESE OF. - In the southern part of the province of Kansu (northwestern China).

Erected as an apostolic prefecture under the name of Southern Kansu on 28 April 1905, by division of the apostolic vicariate of Kansu (v. LANCHOW) and entrusted to the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Scheut), in a new territorial arrangement that took place on 8 May 1922, the apostolic prefecture was suppressed and the apostolic vicariate of Eastern Kansu was erected and entrusted to the Capuchins of the regular province of Rhine-Westphalia. On 3 Dec. 1924 it received the name of apostolic vicar of T.; on 25 Jan. 1930 it ceded 17 civil subprefectures for the erection of the apostolic prefecture of Pingliang (v.); on 11 April 1946 it was elevated to a diocese, suffragan of Lanchow. It has an area of 45,000 sq km. As of 30 June 1950, out of a total population of about 2,500,000 inhabitants, Catholics numbered 8,548 and catechumens 424, priests 28, of whom 18 were Chinese, and sisters 33, of whom 11 were native. Among the works were 3 hospitals, 8 medicine dispensaries, 1 orphanage, 33 schools.

The first Christians of T. were faithful who had emigrated to Kansu from the neighboring civil provinces of Szechwan and Shensi in the second half of the last century. From 1876 a missionary of the apostolic vicariate of Shensi brought them the Sacraments once a year; from 1881, however, a Scheutist religious began to reside in this territory, and others followed him shortly afterward. In 1905 the priests numbered 10, with 775 Christians and 522 catechumens; in 1922 the baptized had risen to about 4,000: although not fiercely persecuted as in many other regions of China, here too Catholicism found the mandarins and the pagan followers of Confucianism opposed to it.

Adamo Pucci