YANGCHOW [YANGZHOU], APOSTOLIC PREFECTURE OF. - In the central-western part of the province of Kiangsu, in central China. It was erected on 9 June 1949 with 7 civil subprefectures of the diocese of Shanghai and was entrusted to the Jesuits of the province of California.
It has an area of about 12,000 sq km. At the time of its erection, out of a total population of about 4,800,000 inhabitants, Catholics numbered 3002 and catechumens 256, distributed in 7 districts provided with a church, the missionary's residence and a school, assisted by 13 priests, of whom 6 were American Jesuits and the other 7 were from the Chinese secular clergy, belonging to nearby missions and only temporarily assigned to Y., where the Auxiliary Sisters of Purgatory also worked.
From a Christian sepulchral slab, discovered in Y. in 1952 and reproducing the image of the Virgin with the Child, a Latin inscription in Gothic characters and the date "June 1342," we have historical proof of the existence of the Franciscan Catholic mission in Y. in the first half of the 14th century, as had hitherto been admitted on the basis of the account of Bl. Odoric of Pordenone. Before the Franciscans, the Nestorian heretics preached there. After every trace of Christianity had disappeared, evangelization was resumed in the 17th century through the work of the Jesuits, first among all Fr. Giulio Aleni, who, among various conversions, brought about that of a Chinese man of letters from Y., baptized with the name Peter. Fr. Francesco Saccani, the apostle of Nanking, converted some young men of letters at Hwaian and left there a good number of neophytes (1638). From 1660 Fr. Gian Domenico Gabiani preached with fruit at Y.: twenty years later several thousand faithful were counted there.
The mission, almost annihilated during the persecution of the emperor Kang-hi, came back to life with the return of the Jesuits to China in 1842. Fr. Giuseppe Sackinger worked at Y. (1866) and at Hwaian (1868), where permanent residences were erected in 1881 and 1886 respectively, then at Kaoyu (1886), at Tsingkiangpu (1933) and in other principal centers beginning in 1921.
YANGCHOW, APOSTOLIC PREFECTURE of. - Image of the Madonna with the Child, scratched on the tomb slab of 1342, found during the demolition work on the walls of the city of Y., on 22 Jan. 1952 (cast).