Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides News Agency) – A hundred years ago, six Chinese priests set sail from Shanghai to receive episcopal consecration at the hands of the Successor of Peter, Pope Pius XI, in Saint Peter's Basilica. In the coming days, two bishops will also travel from China to Rome to commemorate that event.
On Thursday, November 5, the Pontifical Urbaniana University will host the international conference “The Face of the Universal Church in China: 100 Years Since the Consecration of the First Six Chinese Bishops”, with the participation of Joseph Li Shan, Bishop of Beijing, and Ignatius Ding Zuyao, Bishop of Haimen.
On October 28, 1926, in St Peter’s Basilica, Pius XI consecrated Odorico Cheng Hede, Melchior Sun Dezhen, Joseph Hu Ruoshan, Philip Zhao Huaiyi, Simon Zhu Kaimin and Aloysius Chen Guodi: the first Chinese men to become Successors of the Apostles in the modern era. Until then, with the exception of Gregory Luo Wenzao, who was ordained a bishop in 1685, the bishops of the Church of Rome serving in China had all been foreign missionaries. In his homily at the consecration Mass, Pope Ratti spoke of his inability to contain his joy at the sight of these “first fruits and new shoots of the Chinese episcopate”.
The ordination of the six Chinese bishops in Rome in 1926 marked a crucial stage in the missionary shift supported by the Holy See in the early decades of the twentieth century, which also sought to free apostolic work from a colonial mindset. This shift was inspired by the Apostolic Letter Maximum illud (1919), in which Pope Benedict XV had reiterated that the Catholic faith “is foreign to no nation”. The letter had also given impetus to the “Council of Shanghai” of 1924, the first major synodal assembly of the Church in China, where the synod fathers had also called for the growth and formation of the native clergy to be encouraged.
One of the leading figures in that process was Archbishop Celso Costantini, the first Apostolic Delegate to China, who accompanied the six apostolic vicars on the journey that began in Shanghai on September 10, 1926.
Two bishops from the People’s Republic of China and three cardinals among the speakers
The proceedings will open at 10:30 a.m. with welcoming remarks by Professor Andrea D’Auria, Dean of the Urbaniana’s Faculty of Canon Law. The morning session, chaired by Jesuit Father Luciano Morra, S.J., Director of the Pastoral Commission for China, will include an address by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State of His Holiness, and a screening of the documentary "A Long Journey: The Adventure of the Six Chinese Bishops Consecrated in Rome by Pius XI in 1926", by Teresa Tseng Kuang Yi.
This will be followed by addresses from Bishop Li Shan; Jesuit Cardinal Stephen Chow Sau Yan, Bishop of Hong Kong, on “inculturation, Sinicization and interculturality in formation”; and Professor Mario Luigi Grignani, Dean of the Faculty of Missiology and lecturer in the History of the Missionary Church, on the missionary shift under Benedict XV and Pius XI.
The afternoon session will be chaired by Dr Marta Zhao Nan, who heads the Chinese-language edition of Fides News Agency. Following Bishop Ding Zuyao’s address, the speakers will be Professor Elisa Giunipero, who teaches Chinese History at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, whose paper will focus on “the six bishops and the building of the local Church”; Professor Liu Guopeng, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, on the evolution of the system of episcopal consecration in China; Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, Secretary Emeritus of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts, on the legal aspects of those ordinations; and Msgr Flavio Belluomini, archivist of the Dicastery for Evangelization, who will draw on documents held in the Historical Archives of Propaganda Fide.
Cardinal Luis Antonio G. Tagle, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, will deliver the concluding remarks. Chinese songs will punctuate the day’s proceedings.
The presence of the two bishops from the People’s Republic of China is significant. In 1998, the seats of the two bishops invited by John Paul II to the Synod for Asia remained empty; in 2005, none of the four Chinese bishops invited by Benedict XVI was able to travel to Rome. As Fides Agency has documented, events once considered exceptional are beginning to become customary: in May 2024, the Bishop of Shanghai, Joseph Shen Bin, spoke at the Urbaniana itself during the conference marking the centenary of the Council of Shanghai.
Bishop Ding Zuyao, 40, was consecrated on October 15 in Nantong, becoming the nineteenth bishop ordained within the framework of the Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China. He leads a diocese whose see had been vacant since 2023 and which carries considerable symbolic significance: the first Bishop of Haimen was the Jesuit Simon Zhu Kaimin (1868–1960), one of the six bishops consecrated by Pius XI.
The Apostolic Vicariate of Haimen, erected on August 11, 1926, was established at Costantini’s suggestion precisely with the intention of entrusting a representative of the Chinese clergy with the leadership of a new ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In Lisieux, during the European journey undertaken after their consecration by the Chinese bishops ordained in Rome, the elder sister of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus gave Zhu Kaimin a relic, which is now venerated in the cathedral. The new bishop served as parish priest in Caojiazhen, known as “the Chinese Lisieux”: a century later, he is a direct heir to the first Chinese shepherd of his local Church.
Beijing, too, is closely linked to the episcopal consecrations of 1926. Two of the six bishops consecrated, Philip Zhao Huaiyi and Melchior Sun Dezhen, were born and received their formation in Beijing. Zhao, who entered the minor seminary at Beitang Church—now the diocesan cathedral—in 1893, served as Costantini’s secretary; Sun taught for twelve years at the capital’s minor seminary. The Vicariate of Xuanhua, entrusted to Zhao, had been separated from the Vicariate of Beijing.
Bishop Joseph Li Shan was ordained in 2007 with the apostolic mandate of Benedict XVI and recognition from the civil authorities. His presence in Rome, where six Chinese bishops received apostolic succession at the hands of Pope Pius XI in 1926, makes visible that communion with the Bishop of Rome which remains an “indispensable sign” of belonging to the Catholic Church.
To attend, participants must register using the QR code on the attached programme or write to episcopisinenses@propagandafide.va. For further information, call +39 0669895844.
(MLK) (Fides News Agency 28/10/2026)
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