Roman Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong

22°16′43″N 114°09′14″E / 22.2787°N 114.1538°E / 22.2787; 114.1538

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong (

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong is a de jure suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Guangzhou (Canton).^[1] However, in practice it is an immediate subject of the Holy See.^{[citation needed]} Also in theory, not only Hong Kong, but also a small part of Guangdong province belongs to the diocese. In practice, however, the diocese only comprises the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

There were about 395,000 local

Theodore Joset, a Swiss diocesan priest, and former procurator of the mission at Macau, became the first prefect apostolic.^[4] In 1842, at the junction of Pottinger Street and Wellington Street, he laid the foundation stone for the first Catholic church in Hong Kong.^[5] It was dedicated to the Immaculate Conception.

Following Joset's death in 1842,

The prefecture functioned much as a mission, but was intended from its inception to become a diocese. In the first ten years, the missionaries built churches, schools, a seminary, and institutions for the sick, elderly, and orphans. In response to the request of Prefect Apostolic Théodore-Augustin Forcade, four Sisters of Saint Paul of Chartres arrived in Hong Kong on 12 September 1848. The Sisters first task was to establish a home for unwanted babies, mostly girls, abandoned.^[8]

In 1858, the first missionaries, members of the Seminary of Foreign Missions of Milan (now

In 1874 the Hong Kong Prefecture was raised to a

Besides

Churches with resident priests were

In 1875 the Société des Missions Etrangères de Paris established in Pok Fu Lam, Béthanie a sanitorium to serve as a place for priests and missionaries from all over Asia to recover from tropical diseases before returning to their missions. With the 1894, bubonic plague outbreak, much of the population left Hong Kong. John Douglas Lapraik sold the family estate at Pok Fu Lam, Douglas Castle, to the French Mission. The building soon turned into a monastery and was renamed, Nazareth. The building went through a major renovation which included a printing house that operated one of the busiest bible printing and translation facilities of the early 20th century in Asia.

More missionaries arrived from many orders throughout the 1920s and 1930s, building more churches, schools, and hospitals. In 1935, the Dominicans established St. Albert's Priory (aka. St. Albert the Great's Priory), a House of Studies for the whole Far East, at the foot of Mount Nicholson, a place that came to be known as Rosary Hill. The priory closed and the students moved to the Philippines in 1959, and the premises have since been occupied by Rosaryhill School,^[10] with part of the site becoming Villa Monte Rosa [yue].

During World War II, the Japanese occupation stopped almost all activities. Missionaries evacuated, and were variously interned, released, and expelled. After the war, reconstruction began immediately.

Diocese

On 11 April 1946 Pope Pius XII established the episcopal hierarchy in China, raising all the apostolic vicariates to dioceses, Hong Kong among them. Since then, the Hong Kong Diocese is directly responsible to the pope. Enrico Valtorta became the first bishop of Hong Kong.

In 1949 refugees fleeing the Chinese communist regime began to pour into Hong Kong, including many Catholics and clergymen from all over China; diocesan activities were effectively restricted to the boundaries of the Colony. In 1952, the diocese opened seven new chapels for refugees.

In 1969 Bishop Francis Hsu became, after the resignation of Lorenzo Bianchi, the first ethnically Chinese bishop of Hong Kong.

On 29 May 1988

On 18 August 1991, an Open Forum on "Elections 1991", jointly organised by the Council of Priests, the Justice and Peace Commission, the Central Council of Catholic Laity and the Catholic Institute for Religion and Society, was held in the nine constituencies of Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories in order to encourage the faithful to take an active part in the direct elections to the Legislative Council on 15 September. Church organisations also made a similar appeal to the faithful and ordinary citizens through publications, questionnaires and advertisements in newspapers.

On 15 April 1993 the diocese was re-divided into nine

After the death of Cardinal Wu on 23 September 2002, his

On 8 July 2004 the Legislative Council passed the Education (Amendment) Bill 2002 [yue]. Under the amended ordinance, which would be effective on 1 January 2005, every aided school would be required before 2010 to form an incorporated management committee (IMC) whose members should include elected representatives of teachers, parents of students and alumni, as well as other independent persons, with a view to promoting a school-based management. It was the concern of the Church that, as a sponsoring body, she would no longer be empowered in the future to supervise the schools under her sponsorship, nor be able to achieve her goals and objectives in Catholic education. On 5 June 2005, Zen announced that, if the Legislative Council passed the donation to support schools to create incorporated management committees on 8 July 2005, he would appeal against the decision to the court. After the Government decided to give up some of its main objectives and the diocese subsequently decided to support the motion.

On 22 February 2006,

On 15 April 2009. Pope Benedict XVI appointed coadjutor Bishop John Tong Hon as the 7th bishop of the Diocese of Hong Kong after Zen's resignation. Tong was named a member of the College of Cardinals on 19 February 2012. On 1 August 2017, Pope Francis accepted Tong's resignation, which allowed coadjutor Bishop Michael Yeung Ming Cheung to succeed him as the 8th bishop of the Diocese of Hong Kong. Due to Yeung's unexpected death on 3 January 2019, the de facto practice after the handover of having a coadjutor bishop succeed an outgoing bishop could not be followed. His death was shortly followed by the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement, which sharply divided the people of Hong Kong, including Catholics. These circumstances made it difficult to appoint a bishop that could pastorally navigate the social climate of the time, and it was not until May 2021 that Pope Francis was finally able to appoint Jesuit priest Stephen Chow as the 9th bishop of Hong Kong.

Leadership

Ordinaries

Below is a list of individuals who have led the Diocese of Hong Kong and its antecedent jurisdictions since its founding.^[13][14]

Apostolic Prefects

• Theodore Joset (22 April 1841 – 5 August 1842)^[4]
• Antonio Feliciani (11 December 1842 – 10 May 1847) as Prefect Apostolic ad interim^[6]
• Théodore Augustin Forcade (10 May 1847 – 12 September 1885) as Pro-Prefect Apostolic^[8]
• Antonio Feliciani (24 August 1850 – 20 Jun 1855) as Prefect Apostolic ad interim
• Aloysius Ambrosi (20 June 1855 – 10 March 1867) – formerly Luigi Ambrosi
• Timoleon Raimondi (17 November 1867 – 27 December 1868) as Pro-Prefect Apostolic
• Timoleon Raimondi (27 December 1868 – 4 October 1874)

Apostolic Vicars

• Timoleon Raimondi (4 October 1874 – 27 September 1894)
• Louis Piazzoli (11 January 1895 – 26 December 1904)
• Dominic Pozzoni (12 July 1905 – 20 February 1924)
• Giovanni M. Spada (20 February 1924 – 8 March 1926) as Vicar Capitular
• Enrico Valtorta (8 March 1926 – 31 October 1948)

Bishops

• Enrico Valtorta (31 October 1948 – 3 September 1951)
• Lorenzo Bianchi (3 September 1951 – 30 November 1968)
• Francis Hsu (29 May 1969 – 23 May 1973)
• Peter Lei (21 December 1973 – 23 July 1974)
• Cardinal John Baptist Wu (25 July 1975 – 23 September 2002)
• Cardinal Joseph Zen (23 September 2002 – 15 April 2009)
• Cardinal
  John Tong
  (15 April 2009 – 1 August 2017)
• Michael Yeung (1 August 2017 – 3 January 2019)
• Cardinal Stephen Chow (4 December 2021 – present)

Apostolic administrators

• Francis Hsu (30 November 1968 – 29 May 1969)
• Cardinal John Tong (5 January 2019 – 4 December 2021)

Coadjutor bishops

Under the Code of

• Lorenzo Bianchi (21 April 1949 – 3 September 1951)
• Joseph Zen (13 September 1996 – 23 September 2002)
• John Tong Hon (30 January 2008 – 15 April 2009)
• Michael Yeung (13 November 2016 – 1 August 2017)

Auxiliary bishops

Unlike coadjutors, auxiliary bishops do not have the right of succession, per canon 975, §1 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law.^[15] Hsu, Lei, Tong, and Yeung went on to become Bishop of Hong Kong.

• Francis Hsu (1 July 1967 – 30 November 1968)
• Peter Lei (3 July 1971 – 8 September 1971)
• John Tong
  (13 September 1996 – 30 January 2008)
• Michael Yeung (11 July 2014 – 13 November 2016)
• Stephen Lee (11 July 2014 – 23 January 2016)
• Joseph Ha (11 July 2014 – Present)

Other priests of this diocese who became bishops

• Apostolic Nuncio to Malta and Libya
  .

In the period before the handover of Hong Kong and in the period immediately after, the diocese had what the South China Morning Post referred to as "tight control" over the diocesan-operated schools.^[19] The Hong Kong government had a 2004 ordinance that required each school to establish an incorporated management committee (IMC) that would manage each school. The diocese argued that this contradicted the Hong Kong Basic Law's article 141 which stated that the management systems established by religious schools would continue as is.^[19]

See also

• Anglican Diocese of Hong Kong Island
• Christianity in Hong Kong
• Sino-Vatican relations

References

Citations