YANGKU, DIOCESE OF. - In the central-western part of the province of Shantung (northern China).
Erected as an apostolic prefecture on 13 Dec. 1933 from 6 civil subprefectures of the mission of Yenchow and entrusted to the Chinese secular clergy, it was raised on 11 July 1939 to an apostolic vicariate and on 11 Apr. 1946 to a suffragan diocese of Tsinan. It covers an area of 3,250 sq. km. As of 30 June 1947, out of a total population of approximately 1,500,000 inhabitants, there were 29,000 Catholics; 16 priests, including 1 German; 15 major seminarians; and 18 nuns, including 4 foreigners. Among its institutions, besides the minor Seminary located at Poli, were 2 hospitals, 8 medicine dispensaries, 2 orphanages, and 142 schools. The residence of the Ordinary is at Poli, a locality which was also the first centre of the activity of the Verbites, who found there 150 Christians—the only ones in all southern Shantung—when they arrived in 1882. The 6 civil subprefectures ceded in 1933 by the apostolic vicariate of Yenchow for the erection of Y. were the most advanced from the missionary point of view: in that year there were 14,700 Christians and 3,000 catechumens. Fr Tommaso Tien Ken-sin, appointed apostolic vicar of Y. and titular bishop of Ruspe, received episcopal consecration in St Peter’s in Rome, at the hands of Pope Pio XII, on 29 Oct. 1939; transferred to the apostolic vicariate of Tsingtso on 10 Nov. 1942, he was created cardinal—the first in China—at the Consistory of 18 Feb. 1946, and on 11 Apr. of the same year was promoted archbishop of the new metropolitan see of Pechino.