WEIHAIWEI, APOSTOLIC PREFECTURE OF. — In the extreme north-eastern part of Shantung province, in northern China.
It was erected as a mission *sui iuris* on 18 June 1931 with five civil sub-prefectures taken from the Apostolic Vicariate of Chefoo (v.); on 9 February 1938 it was raised to an Apostolic Prefecture. From the beginning it has been entrusted to the Order of Friars Minor, who, for missionary work, send religious from the regular province of St Paschal of the Upper Rhine (Metz).
It covers an area of approximately 20,000 sq km. As of 30 June 1947, with a total population of approximately 3,000,000, there were 4,000 Catholics; 7 priests, all foreign; 7 minor seminarians; and 16 sisters, of whom 3 were Chinese. Among its works were a hospital, an orphanage, and three dispensaries. The first seeds of the Gospel were sown in the territory of W., as in other centres of Shantung, around the mid-17th century by Franciscans who came from the Philippine Islands; but more continuous activity began only after 1894 with the erection of the Apostolic Vicariate of Eastern Shantung (v. CHEFOO), which in 1930 ceded to the new mission of W. 1,500 Christians.