ASIA/CHINA - THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO FRANCISCANS BEGAN HEROIC MISSION IN TIBET: INTERNATIONAL MEETING AND VARIOUS PUBLICATIONS TO MARK THIRD CENTENARY

Wednesday, 4 June 2003

Ancona (Fides Service) - Three hundred years ago the Franciscans began an adventure in the highlands of Tibet, in China. On 14 March 1703 the Congregation de Propaganda Fide entrusted the Capuchin province of the Marche with the arduous task of mission in Tibet and surrounding area. Between 1704 and 1745 no less than 40 Friars worked in Tibet including academic Giuseppe Tucci who, after living for a few weeks in Lhasa capital of Tibetan Lamaism the site of the mission, wrote: “The Capuchins are writing a heroic page of mission with the simplicity of elected souls ”.
To mark the third centenary of the Capuchin mission in Tibet, the Picena province has organised an international meeting to reflect on the leading members of the mission: Friar Francesco Orazio Pennabilli (who compiled a Tibetan-Latin-Italian), Friar. Cassiano Beligatti (called “the ethnologist of Tibet” for his detailed description of uses and customs of the local people ) and Friar Marco da Tomba who in almost 50 years of missionary work, noted and reported on all sorts of information. The Friars also plan to publish a Catalogo biografico and a special issue of the review Voce Francescana (published in Recanati) which traces the history and main steps of the experience.
On reaching Tibet the Franciscans began to work in Lhasa as doctors, earning the esteem of the local people and a few years later there were the first baptisms (1741), and the difficulties began: because the newly baptised Christians refused to take part in community worship imposed by the local Lama they were flogged in public. In 1745 the Friars had to leave the area because their lives were in danger. The only remaining sign of their presence is a bell known as the “Te deum laudamus”, given to Friar Marco da Tomba by an English admiral and which is today still at Lhasa, a monument to the ardent undertaking of the Capuchin missionaries.
Capuchin Father Egidio Picucci says today: “The end of the mission was due to several causes: difficult environment; distance from Rome (a letter took two years to arrive); arduous travelling conditions; impossible climate; scarcity of funds. There remains however the courageous attempt made by the Friars to make the Good News known in the impervious Asian highlands in Tibet and Nepal ”. (PA) (Fides Service 4/6/2003 lines 34 words 390)


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