YÜTZE, DIOCESE of. - In the central-eastern part of the province of Shansi (northern China).
An apostolic prefecture on 7 June 1931, with ten civil Taiyuan (v.); apostolic vicariate on 9 March 1944; suffragan diocese of Taiyuan on 11 Apr. 1946. From the outset it has been entrusted to the Friars Minor of Bologna. Area approximately 24,000 sq. km., with approximately 1,500,000 inhabitants, of whom 15,400 are Catholics; 24 priests (11 Chinese); 38 Chinese nuns; 1 orphanage, 1 hospital, 2 dispensaries, 17 schools (30 June 1947).
In the four civil sub-prefectures situated to the east, evangelical preaching dates back little more than 70 years from the present; in the other six it began with the evangelization of Shansi, at the end of the 17th century. To these regions belonged almost all of the 7,700 Christians entrusted to Y. in 1931, steadfastly attached to the faith, and whose forebears, especially in the sub-prefecture of Kihaien, faced martyrdom and exile in Turkestan rather than apostatize. During the Boxer persecution (1900), this Christian community alone gave 650 martyrs, encouraged to resist by the Chinese priest Paolo Shen, himself also a martyr.