Rome () – On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the Holy See, the Taipei embassy to the Vatican today organized a congress entitled “”Beautiful Taiwan, the Field of God”. , dedicated to the history and faces of the Catholic presence on the island.At the event – which was attended by Ambassador Matthew SM Lee and the secretary of the dicastery for evangelization, Msgr. Protase Rugambwa.Fr. Gianni Criveller spoke. , PIME missionary, Fr Felice Chech, a Camillian missionary, and Fr Paulin Batairwa Kubuya, undersecretary of the dicastery for interreligious dialogue We publish the intervention of Fr Gianni Criveller – who was a missionary in Kaohsiung and Taipei between 1991 and 1994 – on the theme “History of the Catholic mission in Taiwan”.
Missionary Beginnings in Formosa
In 1624 the Dutch occupied the southern part of Taiwan. Three years later, Georgius Candidius, a Dutch official and missionary, wrote a report on the local population: there were only a few hundred Chinese, fishermen from Fujian province. Most of them belonged to different ethnic groups.
The Spanish arrived in northern Taiwan in 1626. They called it Formosa, the beautiful island, a colonial name by which Taiwan was known in the West. Dominican missionaries from the province of Santo Rosario, who were already working in the Philippines and Japan, also arrived: two Spaniards and 11 Japanese. They built the first church and founded communities in Jilong and Danshui in the far north.
In 1631 the Dominicans were joined by the Spanish and Italian Franciscans, who made a stopover in Taiwan to enter China. From Taiwan they crossed the strait to land in Fujian. In this way they avoided Macao, under Portuguese patronage, which prevented non-Jesuits from entering China. In 1633 two Franciscans and two Dominicans, including Antonio María Caballero and Domingo Morales, entered China following this route. They questioned the missionary method of the Jesuits, giving rise to the well-known controversy of the Chinese rites. In 1642 the Catholic missionaries and the Spanish were expelled by the Dutch from the United East India Company. Thus ended the first Catholic mission in Taiwan.
In 1662 the Chinese warlord Zheng Chenggong, (Koxinga in Western sources), pretender to the throne of the Ming dynasty and engaged in resistance against the Manchu conquest of China, seized Fort Zeelandia (Tainan), the colonial center of the Dutch, who were forced to leave Taiwan. Twenty years later, in 1683, the Qing defeated Koxinga’s brief reign and extended control over Taiwan to crush the last Ming resistance. It was then that Beijing first exercised control over the island.
The second stage: the difficult Spanish mission
Taiwan was ceded to the Japanese in 1895 under the Shimonoseki Treaty. In the brief interval between the signature and the inauguration, the Republic of Formosa, the first in Asia, was declared. In 1945 Taiwan was returned to China after Japan’s defeat in World War II.
Meanwhile, the history of the Catholic presence resumed in 1859, thanks again to the Spanish Dominicans, who had been working in the province of Fujian for two centuries. From Xiamen, the missionaries crossed the strait and settled in Kaohsiung, the main city in the south of the island. For ninety years, until the arrival of Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai Shek) in 1949, the Dominicans were the only Catholic missionaries on the island.
The work of the Dominicans was not easy: the ethnic, social and cultural composition of the island was very complex. Adherence to Catholicism was rare. At the end of the 19th century, Catholics numbered just over 1,000, concentrated in a few towns where communities lived isolated from their surroundings.
A special mention deserves the small village of Wanchin, 60 kilometers south of Kaohsiung. The entire village adhered to Catholicism in the 1860s and kept the faith despite hostility from the authorities and neighboring towns. Even today it remains a special place. In Wanchin, the practice of faith remains strong and many religious vocations have been born here. In the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception every year it is celebrated with great solemnity on December 8. On this occasion, faith is expressed through an original combination of traditional Chinese elements, customs of the local populations and religious forms inherited from the Spanish missionaries.
But in the rest of Taiwan the Church grew slowly. The first seminary was opened only in 1920. The Japanese presence put the Christians in a difficult position. To smooth relations with the Japanese government, in 1912 Taiwan became a Japanese-speaking Autonomous Apostolic Prefecture, separate from Xiamen.
The Dominicans did their best to attract the Taiwanese to the faith. But they were still radically contrary to Chinese rites. This increased the difficulty of adhering to the Gospel for a rural population closely connected to the land, the graves, the ancestors, the family and the tablets with the names of the deceased. The situation only changed after the Second World War. In 1935 and 1939 the Holy See reversed the decision of Benedict XIV of 1742, and declared that the rituals in homage to Confucius and the ancestors were admissible.
Meanwhile, with land reform, industrialization, widespread schooling, and urbanization, the people of Taiwan were emancipated from dependence on the land and the traditional family, and thus from the practice of ancestor rites.
Diplomatic troubles involve Taiwan
The Holy See and the Republic of China established diplomatic relations in 1942, which is the event we celebrate today. The second Chinese ambassador to the Vatican, this is 1946, was the well-known Catholic jurist, scholar, and politician John Wu. He converted to Catholicism thanks to his friendship with Nicola Maestrini, a PIME missionary in Hong Kong. John Wu is the author of “The Science of Love”, a beautiful essay dedicated to Teresa of Lisieux, where Teresa is described as a synthesis of Confucian ethics and Taoist mysticism.
Due to the political upheavals in China, internuncio Antonio Riberi was expelled from Beijing and the ROC nunciature moved to Taipei in 1951. Riberi also visited Hong Kong, but the city was then a British colony and could not be the headquarters of a diplomatic representation. The relations signed by Pius XII with the Republic of China were, in effect, relations with China: the Holy See chose to remain present on Chinese territory.
In 1970 Paul VI visited Hong Kong and made an appeal to the authorities of the People’s Republic of China that was never taken into account. The following year, the Pope lowered the diplomatic status of relations by sending a chargé d’affaires to Taipei. Paul VI wanted to show the availability of the Holy See regarding China and no Pope has ever visited Taiwan.
The third stage: the exiled Chinese church in Taiwan
In the early 1950s there were 11,000 faithful, 12 Spanish Dominicans and three Taiwanese priests. At that time, in addition to the internuncio Riberi, more than 800 priests and several hundred religious, Chinese and non-Chinese, arrived from China. And along with them a million soldiers and refugees. The exodus had a huge impact and radically and indelibly transformed the island. The number of Catholics grew impressively to 300,000. Half of the Catholic population belonged to ethnic groups concentrated in the mountainous areas of the center of the island.
Six dioceses were established and schools, boarding schools, hospitals, universities and cultural centers were founded. The social works of the Church met the needs of the people in years of serious emergency due to the enormous influx of refugees.
The Taiwanese church has a unique record: in the 1960s and 1970s it had the highest percentage of religious in the world compared to the number of Catholics. However, the bishops and priests from China hoped to return as soon as possible and created a kind of Church in exile, little rooted among the local population. Even the use of the national language to the detriment of Taiwanese made the Taiwanese feel that the Church was not Taiwanese.
Fourth stage: the Taiwanese Church and the challenges of evangelization
This situation has been resolved in the last 30 years, when the Taiwanese language was adopted in the liturgy and all the bishops were chosen from among the local population, regardless of their ethnic group.
In the 1970s, thanks to the theological study at the Catholic University of Fujen (Taipei), proposals for liturgical adaptation emerged, such as the reading of passages from the Chinese sapiential classics in celebrations or the representation of sacred images in Chinese style.
In the city of Kaohsiung there is the only church that I can recall that has the chancel and altar modeled after the shape of a traditional family altar for ancestor veneration. It is the church of Santa Catalina de Siena built, even on the outside, in Chinese style.
However, there are still great challenges for evangelization in modern times and in a society that is going through a process of profound transformation. Much has been done to preserve the identity of non-Chinese mountain populations. These groups, some 200,000 people in total, each with their own language and culture, have been very willing to accept the Gospel, but their future is quite uncertain. Young people leave the mountains for industrial areas along the coast, easily losing their identity and faith.
Now conversions to Catholicism have become rare. Finding a person interested in Christianity is a happy accident. Many still see Christianity as foreign to the Chinese world and a complicated reality to understand and practice. But it is also true that a considerable effort has been made to bring the Church closer to society and to young people. Numerical success is not sought but credible witness to the Gospel, in the evangelical dynamics of the small flock.
In Taipei I was impressed when a young Taiwanese adhered to the faith. Humanly speaking, it does not provide any advantage, moreover, this decision involves difficulties and resistance from family and friends. Therefore, it seems to me that it is a true work of Grace.
I end with this thought: historical circumstances have forced Taiwan and the Holy See to walk together for many years. Taiwan cannot be viewed as a mere historical legacy to be left behind. Taiwan is small, but its history has great meaning: here the Church is free and lives in peace. There is freedom, pluralism, dialogue between believers of different religions and democracy. It is not a small thing in this age where freedom, dialogue and democracy are valued so little.
* PIME missionary and sinologist
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