Catholicism

In 635, during the reign of Tang Emperor Taizong, members of a Christian sect known as Nestorianism arrived in Shaanxi Province. The church they established flourished for more than 200 years, before vanishing into oblivion. In 1245, Italian and French missionaries arrived in China. The religion they professed was referred to as "Yeliwen" by the Chinese. Like its predecessor, it died out after a period of time.

In 1582, Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit, came to China. He arrived in Beijing in 1601. Among the gifts he presented to Emperor Shenzong of the Ming Dynasty were some chiming clocks. He soon became a friend of Xu Guangqi, Minister of Rites to the Ming court. Ricci propagated the doctrines of Catholicism and introduced Western astronomy, calendar-making and mathematics. With the permission of Emperor Shenzong he built a Catholic church in Beijing. From then on, China saw an inflow of missionaries from the West.

Toward the end of the Ming Dynasty there were an estimated 40,000 Catholics in China. During the early days of the Qing Dynasty the number increased to nearly 300,000. Faced with the growing influence of this foreign church, the Qing court decided to take measures to proscribe Catholicism. As a result, the number of Catholics in the country was reduced to 200,000 by the end of the 18th century.

After the Opium War in 1840, the Qing government was forced to lift the ban on Catholicism. Foreign missionaries were then free to take their religion into the inland and set up churches there. As these missionaries sometimes forcibly seized land from locals, interfered with the administration of justice and bullied the people, they became the targets of public outbursts of anger throughout China. After the Revolution of 1911, Catholicism took on new momentum in the country.

The Catholic Church in old China was under the complete jurisdiction of the Holy See, and Chinese Catholics had no power. There were very few Chinese archbishops and bishops.

By the end of 2006, China had 5 million Catholics, 4,000 clergy and 5,000 churches and meeting houses, 12 seminaries and 110 parishes nationwide. Over 50,000 Chinese are baptized each year. The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association has printed more than 3 million copies of the Bible.