Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Nan Chang (Agenzia Fides) - “This city is one of the most important and noble of China not only because it is a metropolis of such a noble province, but because it is beautiful, large and its sons are of great intellect, many of its great men today govern various parts of China”, this was the description Italian Jesuit missionary Father Matteo Ricci gave 411 years ago of the town of Nan Chang where he resided for three years waiting to be allowed to enter Peking. Now Nan Chang, the main town of the Jiang Xi province in mainland China, has decided to name a square after its first “Western promoter”. The large Square which covers an area of 2,900sq mt., is near the southern gate of the city. A 3mt high statue of Matteo Ricci will be erected at the centre bearing a plaque with a brief history of the ‘apostle of China’ in Chinese and English.
Project director Mr Yang Jian Bao who is vice president of the Nan Chang Associations of Writers said, “Matteo Ricci spent three quite happy years here. He brought western technology to China and learned much about Chinese culture building friendships with intellectuals, scholars, doctors and nobles and ordinary townsfolk. Some later followed him in his mission. He spoke about Nan Chang, ‘twice the size of Florence’ in many letters of his letters, and so our city was known to Europeans already 400 years ago. It is our duty to remember him and to foster his same spirit of dialogue and exchange among East and West”.
It was while in Nan Chang, that Father Ricci decided that to facilitate his mission he would take a Chinese name and wear Chinese clothes. His scientific and religious books on cartography, mathematics, philosophy, moral theology and apologetics were highly appreciated and admired. Among his most famous works a Chinese Map of the World (3.75m by 1.80m), Treaty on Friendship (1595) the Palace of Memory (1596). He was appointed superior of the mission. Obeying orders of Fr Malignano Jesuit visitor general of the Mission in China on 25 June 1598 Fr. Ricci left Nan Chang for Beijing, where he arrived on 24 January 1601 preceded by the fame of "a wise man of the West".
A great pioneer of mission in China, Fr. Matteo Ricci, was born in Macerata Italy, 6 October 1552. He reached Goa, the Portuguese base in India, on 13 September 1578. In 1582 he started studying Chinese in Macao, on the south coast of China. He died in Beijing on 11 May 1610. For the first time in the history of Chine the emperor gave a piece of land for the burial of a foreigner. Therefore Fr. Ricci can rightly be called "Apostle of China". (Agenzia Fides 16/06/2006 Righe: 2,682 Parole: 41)
