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The French Religious Protectorate enabled France to act as the guardian of Catholics in China. After the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin, it protected Catholic missions and missionaries and was accepted as a diplomatic arrangement by the main international actors. While not being a signatory to the Protectorate, the Catholic Church complied with its terms and accepted French diplomatic representation in matters of Chinese affairs. The agreement involved all missionaries from different countries in China, including those of Italian origin. Inevitably, over time, the Protectorate became a controversial question because it exposed the Church’s pastoral mission to interferences from foreign powers. In November 1928, Italy signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with China, enhancing political relations under Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership. It was the beginning of a new age of cooperation and reciprocities based on strong political affinities. A few months later, on 11 February 1929, Italy and the Holy See signed the Lateran Pacts, reestablishing diplomatic relations after Rome’s annexation to the Kingdom in 1870. Benito Mussolini saw the importance of aligning with the Church to gain the support of Catholics and strengthen his leadership. These agreements bolstered cooperation between the regime and the Church in domestic and international affairs. In China, the cooperation allowed the Church to gradually shift away from French diplomatic interference and finally attempt to connect, free of constraints, with the Chinese Nationalist government.

The Diocese of Macao was established on 23 January 1576, becoming the Holy See’s first base of operation in the Far East.

Travelling from Italy to Macao as a missionary in the 1960s, the cleric devoted his life to the lives of lepers – now known as Hansenian patients.

Andrew Kim Taegon, a passionate young Christian set out a path that has since been followed by millions of the faithful.

Abstract This chapter analyzes three constraints which affect the social involvement of the Macao Catholic Church, based on an inter-disciplinary method using social scientific and historical studies. First, addressing passiveness and conservativeness of the Portuguese Catholicism from which the Macao Catholic Church originated in relation to the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. Second, showing the Macao Catholic Church demonstrates a comparatively traditional/conservative type of faith in contrast to the active and assertive roles of Roman Catholic Church in this-worldly affairs after Vatican II. Lastly, explaining the small size of Macao society poses a structural constraint on the civil involvement of the Church.

This article examines the acclamation of King João IV at Macau in 1642, with special attention to an account of the pageantry that followed the arrival of the news from Portugal. The discussion has three parts. One considers the colony’s social and religious climate in the years leading up to the event. The next looks into the dramatic change of mood that followed in its wake. The third part investigates the well-known source describing the ceremonies. The contrast between a colony rent by division and one united by common purpose is so striking that it raises important questions about the historical source that describes the acclamation.

This dissertation analyses the role of bishops of eight dioceses created in Asia (Goa, Malacca, Macao and Funai and Manila, Cebu, Neuva Cáceres and Nueva Segovia) for the consolidation of the Royal Power of the Iberian crowns between 1558 and 1668. To deal with this issue, this thesis looks at the creation of bishoprics as part of the territorialisation strategies of the Iberian monarchies. It understands the episcopal appointments in the context of the so-called “economia de mercês” (i.e. a system based on the principle that kings used royal appointment to promote loyalty between them and their subjects). And it analysis the transfer of legal frameworks and ecclesiastical institutions, particularly the cathedrals and the parishes, from Europe to Asia. The chronological period includes two important milestones that had a major impact on the dimensions just mentioned. The first is related to the Iberian Union, when the Iberian crowns became subject to the same monarchs. The second is related to the foundation of Propaganda Fide in 1622, which corresponds to the affirmation of Rome's direct intervention in missionary areas, which was visible from very early on in the Estado da Índia. Using mostly documents from Portuguese, Spanish and Vatican archives, while taking advantage of the comparative perspective methods, I’ll argue that despite various limits, the episcopate was a central pillar in the consolidation of power of the Iberian monarchies, which were particularly dependent on the bishops in these regions, given the absence of many other structures that guaranteed the preservation of royal authority. It is in the tension between the project of consolidating authority and political dominance and the resistance and limits it faced that this thesis is developed.

Catholics in Macau, Taiwan and Hong Kong are divided over the provisional agreement between China and the Vatican on the appointment of bishops.

We analyse the importance of the generation of Jesuit pioneer missionaries at the service of the Portuguese Patronage for the implementation of quốc ngữ [national language] in present-day Vietnam and the linguistic description of the tonology of Annamese or Tonkinese (former names of Vietnamese). We analyse, in particular, the manuscript Manuductio ad Linguam Tunckinensem (ca. 1745 [ante 1623]) by Francisco de Pina, S.J. (1585/1586–1625), and the Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum and the grammatical treatise Linguae Annamiticae seu Tunchinensis Brevis Declaratio (Rome 1651) by Alexandre de Rhodes, S.J. (1593–1660). We corroborate that Pina was indeed the first to use the Romanization system of Tonkinese, and we establish that he was also the first to describe its six tones in detail. Rhodes expanded Pina’s knowledge, which is particularly explicit in the description of Tonkinese tonology. We also explain that Rhodes used lost manuscript dictionaries written by Gaspar do Amaral, S.J. (1594–1646) and António Barbosa, S.J. (1594–1647), which is evident mainly in the use of the “Portuguese” digraph <nh> to represent the phoneme /ɲ/.

RESUMO: A celebração de rituais públicos era um momento privilegiado de representação das hierarquias sociais de cada território. Um dos maiores desafios que a historiografia tem enfrentado resulta da dificuldade em avaliar a forma como as populações locais entendiam a celebração ritual a partir dos seus próprios quadros culturais, especialmente quando se trata de grupos extraeuropeus e não convertidos. Partindo deste problema, este texto pretende analisar o modo como as autoridades chinesas olhavampara alguns dos rituais públicos, especialmente os de natureza religiosa, que tiveram lugar em Macau, tendo por base a obra Aomen ji lüe, da autoria de Yin Guangren e Zhang Rulin, preparada entre 1751 e 1757.1 PALAVRAS-CHAVE: China; Macau; Ásia; Rituais religiosos; Mandarins. ABSTRACT: The celebration of public rituals was a privileged moment of social hierarchy representation in each territory. One of the biggest challenges historiography faces is the result of the difficulty in evaluating how local populations understood the ritual celebration taking their own cultural framing as a starting point, especially when referring to non-converted and non-European groups. Given this problem, this article analyses the way in which Chinese authorities regarded some of the public rituals, especially the religious ones, which occurred in Macau, using Yin Guangren e Zhang Rulin’s Aomen ji lüe (1751-1757) as a reference. KEYWORDS: China; Macau; Asia; Religious rituals; Mandarins.

In the 16th century, the first Spanish and Portuguese Dominican missionaries arrived in Southeast Asia, included Vietnam, but only after the first decades of the seventeenth century, Christianity began to take hold and lived through different episodes of the Proclamation of the Christian faith: first it was tolerated and then abandoned by the dynasties, supported by the colonialists, declined in the north by the communists, it expanded in the south under the Republic of Vietnam and stabilized until now after the reunification of the country followed by a long breakage due to political change. Along with this story, sacred architecture was interpreted in various ways to define identities in religious life and faith. However, the most difficult period of religious architecture is not only in the political conflict of the past, but also until now, the time of the economic boom. The change of values as well as the aesthetic system make sacred art and architecture remain a giant wheel stuck in mud.