Catholics in a remote mountain area of southwestern China continue to keep their faith alive, even though no priest has been stationed there for more than five decades.
Hu Junjie, a 64-year-old local lay leader, stated June 10 that despite the lack of a resident priest, about 5,000 Catholics, mainly Drung, Lisu, Nu and Tibetan ethnic minorities, in Gongshan Drungzu Nuzu Autonomous County in northwestern Yunnan province pray together daily. Gongshan, adjacent to Tibet Autonomous Region, is about 2,120 kilometers southwest of Beijing.
Hu, a Drung ethnic, also said that local Catholics have not only maintained their faith, they have also evangelized. During winter time when there was no farm work to do, he explained, Catholics would go in groups of two or three to visit and preach to non-Catholic villagers at their homes.
Given the many different ethnic minority groups in the county, Hu said it was hard to use the Bible to evangelize in that area because the Bible is available only in Chinese, Tibetan and Lisu. That is why Catholics here use hymns as a medium to spread the Good News instead, he pointed out. According to Hu, his own 100-year-old father has led other lay leaders in organizing catechism classes in Chinese, Lisu and Tibetan every winter.
Father Paul Chen Kaihua of Kunming diocese in the same province said that after learning about the community from one of his diocese’ faithful, he has been visiting them twice a year since January 2002. Father Chen said he was impressed by their faith. Despite the absence of a priest, he said the number of churches has grown to 15 from the three established before the communists came to power in 1949. The number of Catholics also grew from 1,000 to 5,000, thanks to the laypeople's evangelization endeavor. French missioners served the area before 1949.
The priest recounted that the blessing of two new churches there on May 30 has encouraged the Catholics to continue expanding their community, much as they have been doing in recent years. Father Chen celebrates Mass and administers sacraments each time he visits.
Father John Fang Ping from Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwestern China visited Gongshan in August 2002 after a Xinjiang parishioner working in Yunnan told him about the Catholics. Father Fang says it is one of China's poorest counties. "The villagers seldom see a priest. Occasionally, priests from other places pay short visits. So the Catholics usually gather by themselves to pray."
But now, thanks to their efforts, there are two nuns and a minor seminarian studying in Kunming, the provincial capital, and four seminarians studying in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, 1,200 kilometers northeast of Gongshan.
When Father Fang visited the county in 2002, the villagers told him they had just built two new churches but could find no priest to consecrate them. So he blessed the new churches, which are situated above the snow line. He also celebrated Mass with them in Putonghua (Mandarin), the national language, and lay parishioners translated into ethnic languages for the villagers.
Father Fang said the churches took three years to complete and the Catholics themselves carried every piece of brick, wood and rock uphill. At the blessing ceremony, he recalled, the villagers dressed in traditional ethnic costumes and offered their agricultural produce and chickens, lambs and cows as gifts to God. They celebrated with wine and dancing around the churches.
Father Fang said he was especially touched to see Gongshan's parishioners build their churches since his own parish in Xinjiang still has none due to a shortage of financial and human resources. At his parish in Hotan city in southern Xinjiang, he celebrates Mass for his 500 parishioners, mostly ethnic Han, only in their homes. His parish is near the Tibetan Region border and more than a 20-hour drive from Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.
In Gongshan county, he added, he learned to say the Hail Mary in Tibetan. "They keep praying and singing old religious chants in their own languages. That is an important cultural heritage of the Catholic Church there," he said.
Elsewhere in China, other churches or prayer houses are managed by local layleaders who, if a priest is unavailable, usually lead the rosary every morning and evening, as well as other prayers on Sundays.