WEIHAIWEI, APOSTOLIC PREFECTURE. — At the north-eastern extremity of the province of Shantung, in northern China.
It was erected as a sui iuris mission on 18 June 1937 from 5 civil subprefectures Chefoo (v.); on 9 February 1938 it was elevated to an apostolic prefecture. From the beginning it has been entrusted to the Order of Friars Minor, which, for missionary work, sends there religious from the regular province of S. Pasquale of the Upper Rhine (Metz).
It has an area of approximately 20,000 sq. km. On 30 June 1947, out of a total population of approximately 3,000,000 inhabitants, there were 4,000 Catholics; 7 priests, all foreign; 7 seminarians, all minors; and 16 sisters, of whom 3 were Chinese. Among its institutions were 1 hospital, 1 orphanage, and 3 dispensaries. The first seeds of the Gospel were also sown in the territory of W., as in other centres of Shantung, towards the middle of the 17th century by Franciscans who had come 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 1,500 Christians to the new mission of W.
BIRL.: AAS, 23 (1931), p. 401; 30 (1938), pp. 312-13; Arch. di Prop. Fide, Incarto erezione W., 1931; GM, p. 312; Ann. de l'Egl. cath. en Chine 1948, Shanghai 1948, passim; MC, 1950, p. 322. Adamo Pucci