Catholic Missions in Asia

The Christian mission did not first head West, but East. The Acts of the Apostles show the disciples going out "to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8) — and for the Christians of the 1st century, the ends of the world were India, Mesopotamia and Persia, long before Gaul. Asia is the cradle of the first Christian globalization, and its Christianity predates that of Northern Europe by several centuries.

Saint Thomas in India (1st century)

The oldest and most tenacious tradition makes the apostle Thomas the evangelizer of South India. According to the Syriac Acta Thomae (written in the 3rd century at Edessa), Thomas is said to have landed around 52 at Muziris (Kodungallur, Kerala), to have evangelized the Malabar coast, founded seven Churches (Ezhara Pallikal), then crossed the subcontinent to Mylapore, near present-day Chennai, where he is said to have been martyred in the year 72^[8].

"When our Lord ascended into heaven and the apostles divided the world among themselves by lot, India fell to Judas Thomas." — Acta Thomae, prologue, Syriac version, 3rd century^[9]

This tradition is attested by the Fathers: Saint Ephrem in the 4th century, Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome (Letter 59 to Marcella, in 395/396: the risen Christ "with Thomas in India") and Saint Gregory of Tours^[10]. Contemporary scholarship considers its historical basis plausible, without being able to decide between a mission by Thomas himself and one by a missionary sent in his name: trade links between the Roman Mediterranean and the port of Muziris are well attested from the 1st century (the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, around 60 AD, already describes the sea route). The presence of an organized Christian community in Kerala from the 4th century is, for its part, certain^[11].

The Saint Thomas Christians (Nasrani)

From the 4th to the 15th century, the Christianity of Kerala lived with no organic link to Rome. Attached to the Church of the East (patriarchal see at Seleucia-Ctesiphon then Baghdad), the Saint Thomas Christians — called Nasrani ("Nazarenes") by their neighbours — had their own liturgy in East Syriac, their own metropolitan bishops sent from Mesopotamia, and full social integration into the caste society of Malabar, where they held the rank of noble caste^[12].

The arrival of the Portuguese in 1498 (Vasco da Gama) and the development of the Padroado overturned this balance. The Synod of Diamper (Udayamperur), held from 20 to 26 June 1599 under the direction of Aleixo de Meneses, Archbishop of Goa, forcibly latinized the liturgy, burned many Syriac books and placed the Nasrani under the direct obedience of the Portuguese hierarchy^[13]. Resentment accumulated.

On 3 January 1653, several hundred priests and laypeople gathered at Mattancherry near Cochin, tied a rope to a crucifix erected on a public square and swore on the Gospels henceforth to refuse obedience to the Portuguese as well as to the Jesuits, recognizing only a bishop come from the East: this is the Coonan Cross Oath^[14]. The majority would eventually return to Catholic communion in the following decades; today's Syro-Malabar Catholics (nearly 5 million) and Syro-Malankara (≈ 0.5 million) are their heirs, keeping the Syriac liturgy within the Catholic Church^[15].

The Church of the East on the Silk Road

Meanwhile, at the other end of the continent, another branch of Asian Christianity had spread along the Silk Road. The Church of the East (long called "Nestorian" by its opponents^[16]) had swarmed from the Tigris toward Persia, Central Asia, Mongolia and China. By the 7th century, its metropolises extended to Merv (Turkmenistan), Samarkand, Herat, and reached Chang'an, capital of Tang China^[17].

The arrival of the monk Alopen at Chang'an in 635 is documented by a major event: Emperor Taizong received him personally, charged his officials with translating his holy books and granted him freedom to preach. A church was built in the capital in 638^[18]. For two centuries, the "luminous religion" (jingjiao) prospered, until Emperor Wuzong, in 845, banned it along with Buddhism.

The Xi'an stele (781)

The most spectacular witness of this adventure is the Xi'an stele, erected on 7 January 781. Composed by the monk Adam (Jingjing) — probably metropolitan of the Church of the East for China — it measures 2.79 m in height and bears a long text in Chinese (about 1,800 characters), accompanied by passages in Syriac — names, dates and signatures^[19]. The top of the stele is engraved with a cross set upon the Buddhist lotus: a cautious iconographic adaptation, expressing the missionary will to inculturate at a time when the term did not yet exist.

Buried during the persecutions of 845, the stele was rediscovered in 1625 near a church of Matteo Ricci's Jesuit mission, immediately becoming apologetic proof: Christianity had already been present in China seven centuries before the Jesuits. The Jesuit Alvaro Semedo was the first to report its existence to Europe in 1625; his account appeared in his Relacao da propagacao da Fe no Reyno da China (Madrid, 1642), and the first Latin translation of the inscription published in Europe was that of Athanasius Kircher's China Illustrata (1667)^[20].

In the 13th century, the brutal irruption of the Mongol Empire turned Eurasia into an open space: the Pax Mongolica secured the Silk Road from Beijing to Tabriz, and Catholic sovereigns dreamed of an alliance with the Mongols to take the Muslims from the rear. It is in this context that the papacy sent its first diplomat-missionaries to the heart of Asia.

John of Plano Carpini (1245-1247)

The Franciscan John of Plano Carpini was sent in 1245 by Pope Innocent IV bearing the bull Cum non solum, which exhorted the Mongols to cease their invasions and embrace baptism. Setting out from Lyon, he reached Karakorum, capital of the Mongol empire, in July 1246, and attended the enthronement of the great khan Guyuk. He brought back the first great Western description of the Mongols, the Historia Mongalorum, presented to the pope in 1247^[21].

William of Rubruck (1253-1255)

A few years later, the Flemish Franciscan William of Rubruck was sent by Saint Louis from Constantinople, in May 1253. He reached the camp of Khan Mongke, brother and predecessor of Kublai, in December 1253, and stayed there several months. His account, more precise still than Plano Carpini's, describes for the first time in Latin the Uyghur alphabet, the steppe, Tibetan Buddhism, and a public disputation held at Karakorum in May 1254 between himself, Muslims and Buddhists, presided over by the khan — one of the first documented interreligious controversies between Christians, Muslims and Buddhists before a sovereign of Asia^[22].

John of Montecorvino, first Archbishop of Beijing (1294-1328)

The peak of this adventure is the work of John of Montecorvino (1247-1328). Sent by Pope Nicholas IV, this Neapolitan Franciscan arrived at Khanbaliq (Beijing) around 1294, just after the death of Kublai Khan. He stayed there 34 years, until his death in 1328^[23].

"I have built a church in the city of Cambalu, where the great khan resides: completed six years ago, I have placed a cemetery there. I have baptized about six thousand people there." — Letter of John of Montecorvino, 8 January 1305^[24]

On 22 July 1307, Pope Clement V, by the bull Rex regum, erected Khanbaliq as an archbishopric and appointed Montecorvino its first archbishop, sending seven Franciscan bishops to consecrate him (only three would reach Beijing alive)^[25]. Montecorvino translated the New Testament and the Psalms into Mongolian, founded a school for children, and organized a mission at Zayton (Quanzhou) — where 14th-century Sino-Latin Christian tombstones were uncovered in the 1940s^[26].

The adventure collapsed with the fall of the Yuan dynasty in 1368 and the seizure of power by the Ming, firmly xenophobic. When the Jesuits returned to China two centuries later, they found no trace left of this first Latin Church, except, by chance, the Xi'an stele unearthed in 1625.

The missionary impetus of the 16th century is without parallel in the history of the Church. It combines four factors: the great maritime discoveries (Portugal and Spain), the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation, the foundation of the Society of Jesus (1540) and the creation of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide), decided by Gregory XV on 6 January 1622 then erected by the constitution Inscrutabili Divinae of 22 June 1622^[27].

The Portuguese Padroado and the Propaganda Fide

The Portuguese Padroado is the legal framework that structured the Catholic missions in Asia for two centuries. By the bull Inter Caetera (4 May 1493) of Alexander VI, the Treaty of Tordesillas (7 June 1494) and several other pontifical acts, the King of Portugal received the privilege of presenting bishops in all territories discovered east of the fixed meridian^[28].

Goa was erected a diocese in 1533 by the bull Aequum reputamus of Clement VII, suffragan of Funchal (Madeira), then an archdiocese in 1557. It became the spiritual capital of Catholic Asia, endowed with printing presses (the first European typographic press in India, installed in 1556 — first book printed in 1557), colleges and seminaries^[29].

With time, the rigidity of the Padroado — which required every mission to pass through Lisbon — became an obstacle. Rome therefore created apostolic vicariates directly attached to the Propaganda Fide, outside Portuguese control, of which the Paris Foreign Missions (1659) would be the operational arm.

Saint Francis Xavier (1506-1552), apostle of the Indies and Japan

No figure dominates the imagination of the Asian missions more than Saint Francis Xavier. Born on 7 April 1506 at the castle of Xavier in Navarre, fellow student of Ignatius of Loyola in Paris, he was one of the seven first companions who pronounced the vows of Montmartre on 15 August 1534. Sent to Asia in 1541 as apostolic nuncio by Paul III at the request of King John III of Portugal, Xavier landed at Goa in May 1542^[30].

His missionary life lasted only ten years. But in those ten years, he evangelized the Paravas of the Fishery Coast (South India, 1543-1545), Malacca (1545-1547), the Moluccas — Amboina and Ternate — (1546-1547), Japan (1549-1551) and died on the island of Sancian, within sight of the Chinese coast, on 3 December 1552, without having been able to breach the wall of the Middle Empire^[31].

In his letter of 22 January 1552 to Ignatius of Loyola, he set out his plan: to go to the court of the King of China, convinced that if God granted him to preach Christ to this king, all China would receive the faith^[32].

His letters to the Jesuits of Europe, very quickly copied, translated and circulated throughout the continent, electrified a whole generation: "My dearest Brothers, how many souls would be saved if you were here!"^[33]. More than his method (by which, as on the Fishery Coast, he baptized by the thousands), it is this missionary passion that founds his lasting influence. Beatified in 1619, canonized in 1622 by Gregory XV (the same day as Saint Ignatius), Xavier saw his feast raised to a higher rite by Pius X, whose act of 25 March 1904 recommended the Work of the Propagation of the Faith to the charity of the faithful^[34]; he was later joined by Saint Therese of the Child Jesus as co-patroness of the missions by Pius XI on 14 December 1927^[35].

The China mission and the Chinese Rites Controversy (see main article)

The Chinese adventure is treated in detail in its own article. From Matteo Ricci (in Beijing in 1601) to Schall, Verbiest and Castiglione at the court of Kangxi and Qianlong, through the Chinese Rites Controversy condemned by Ex quo singulari in 1742 and finally resolved by Pius XII in Plane compertum est of 8 December 1939, China is the theatre of the greatest intellectual undertaking of the Catholic missions.

See the detailed article: The Jesuit Missions in China (1582-1773)

The Japan mission, from springtime to persecution (see main article)

Japan, opened by Xavier on 15 August 1549, counted nearly 300,000 baptized by the end of the 16th century before being crushed by the Tokugawa edicts: 26 martyrs of Nagasaki on 5 February 1597, the great martyrdom of 1622, and the silent resistance of the hidden Christians (kakure kirishitan) found again at Urakami on 17 March 1865 by Fr. Bernard Petitjean.

See the detailed article: The Jesuit Missions in Japan (1549-1644)

Roberto de Nobili and the Madurai mission (1606-1656)

Alongside Ricci in China, Roberto de Nobili (1577-1656) is the other great architect of Jesuit inculturation in Asia. Born at Montepulciano to a noble Tuscan family, he arrived at Goa on 20 May 1605 and settled at Madurai in Tamil Nadu in November 1606^[36].

There he observed a bitter failure: Christianity was perceived as the "religion of the Paranguis" — that is, of the Portuguese, regarded as pariahs by the high castes because of their beef-eating and supposed dirtiness. Almost no Brahmin had been baptized in a century of mission.

Nobili then made a radical decision: he presented himself as a Roman Brahmin (raja sannyasi), donned the orange kavi, marked his forehead with the tilak, became vegetarian, lived in prayer and study, learned Tamil, Telugu and above all Sanskrit — of which he was the first European to acquire a real mastery. In 1611, he published in Tamil a Catechism presenting Christ with the cultural grammar of the Vedas^[37].

In his Informatio de quibusdam moribus (1613), he argued that Christianity is not the "religion of the Portuguese" but the true law of God for all men — and that the Brahmins themselves, through the Vedas, unknowingly sense this one God^[38].

His method triggered the Malabar rites controversy: may one tolerate in an Indian Christian the Brahmin cord (upanayana), the tuft of hair (kudumi), ritual ablutions and the mark on the forehead? After twenty years of examination, Gregory XV published on 31 January 1623 the constitution Romanae Sedis Antistes authorizing these practices as signs of civility, on condition they be purified of any pagan religious connotation^[39]. The controversy would nevertheless flare up again, and Benedict XIV would end by forbidding the Malabar rites through Omnium sollicitudinum of 12 September 1744 — a decision parallel to the one extinguishing the Chinese mission at the same moment^[40].

Before this halt, Nobili and his successors (John de Britto, martyred in 1693) had nevertheless baptized more than 80,000 people in the Madurai mission, including hundreds of Brahmins — an unprecedented fact. Nobili's lesson is clear and still dictates the language of the Magisterium: a culture is evangelized by marrying it, not by despising it.

The Philippines are, with Timor-Leste, the only Asian country with a Catholic majority: about 80% Catholic, some 93 million faithful^[41]. This singularity is explained by a unique historical combination found nowhere else in Asia.

Magellan, Cebu, Lapulapu (1521)

Evangelization began on 14 April 1521 at Cebu, where the Spanish expedition of Ferdinand Magellan, after crossing the Pacific, was peacefully welcomed by Rajah Humabon. Within days, Humabon, his wife Hara Amihan (baptized Juana in honour of the Queen of Castile) and nearly 800 natives were baptized. Magellan planted a wooden cross on the shore — the "Magellan's Cross" — still kept at Cebu^[42].

Thirteen days later, on 27 April 1521, Magellan died at the Battle of Mactan, killed by the chief Lapu-Lapu, and the ephemeral Christianity of Cebu disappeared with him. The Philippines became pagan again.

Legazpi and the conquest of Luzon (1565-1571)

Lasting evangelization began with the expedition of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, which arrived at Cebu in April 1565. Five Augustinians accompanied him, including the famous Andres de Urdaneta, who discovered that same year the return route Manila-Acapulco by the high latitudes of the North Pacific — the famous "tornaviaje" that would make the Manila galleon possible for 250 years^[43].

Manila was founded on 24 June 1571 by Legazpi. Within decades, four religious orders shared the territory: Augustinians (1565), Franciscans (1578), Jesuits (1581), Dominicans (1587), joined by the Recollects in 1606. The first provincial council of Manila was held in 1582 under the first bishop, Domingo de Salazar OP, who courageously defended the rights of Filipinos against the abuses of the encomienda^[44].

Why did evangelization take root?

Three factors converged to make the Philippines an exception:

The result is unique: a deeply rooted popular Catholic identity, which survived the loss of Spanish power (1898), the American occupation, war, and which makes the Philippines the first Catholic demographic power of Asia.

Saint Lorenzo Ruiz, first Filipino saint (born between 1600 and 1610 – died at Nagasaki in 1637)

The first Filipino saint of the modern era is neither Chinese nor Japanese: he is a layman born in Manila. The exact date of Lorenzo Ruiz's birth at Binondo (Manila) is unknown: historians place it between 1600 and 1610. Son of a Chinese father (Sangley) and a Tagalog mother, both Catholic. Clerk (escribano) at the church of Binondo, married and father of three children, he fled Manila in 1636 after being unjustly accused of murdering a Spaniard^[46].

He boarded a ship departing with three Japanese Dominicans and a French priest, unaware he was heading for Okinawa, then Nagasaki, then in full Tokugawa persecution. Arrested, subjected to the torment of water, to the torture of needles under the fingernails, finally hanged by the feet in the pit (tsurushi) at Nagasaki, he died on 29 September 1637 after refusing apostasy, declaring:

"I am a Catholic, and I want to die for God. If I were given a thousand lives, I would offer them all for Him. Do not ask me to renounce Him. Never!" — Saint Lorenzo Ruiz, words reported by the Dominican chronicles of Nagasaki, 1637^[47]

Beatified on 18 February 1981 by John Paul II at Manila — the first beatification ever celebrated outside Rome^[48] — he was canonized in 1987 as the first Filipino saint and a figure of lay martyrdom.

Vietnam, divided in the 17th century between the kingdom of Tonkin (North) governed by the Trinh lords and that of Cochinchina (South) governed by the Nguyen, became the second great Jesuit mission field of continental Asia, just after China.

The Jesuits in Tonkin and Cochinchina (1615-1660)

On 18 January 1615, the Jesuits Francesco Buzomi (Italian) and Diogo Carvalho (Portuguese), with the Japanese brother Antonio Diaz, landed at the port of Hoi An in Cochinchina — the first expelled from Japan in the great wave of 1614. A few years later, in March 1627, Fr. Alexandre de Rhodes landed in his turn, this time in Tonkin, where he evangelized at Thang Long (Hanoi) for more than three years before being expelled^[49].

Alexandre de Rhodes and the quoc ngu

Alexandre de Rhodes (1593-1660), born at Avignon, is the great architect of the romanization of the Vietnamese language. Taking up and perfecting the work of Francisco de Pina (died 1625) and Gaspar do Amaral, he published in 1651 at Rome, on the presses of the Propaganda Fide, three decisive works:

1. Dictionarium Annamiticum, Lusitanum et Latinum — the first Vietnamese dictionary;
2. Catechismus pro iis qui volunt suscipere baptismum, in octo dies divisus — the first book printed in romanized Vietnamese, bilingual Latin-Annamite;
3. Linguae Annamiticae seu Tunchinensis brevis declaratio — the first grammar^[50].

The romanized writing system developed — the quoc ngu, "national language" — long remained used only by missionaries and their converts, before being officially adopted by Vietnam in the 20th century. Today, this romanized alphabet systematized for catechesis has become the national script of Vietnam^[51].

The Paris Foreign Missions in Indochina

The rapid success of the missions (Rhodes baptized several thousand people in a few years) brought a crisis: a local clergy and resident bishops were needed, but the Portuguese Padroado blocked any non-Lusitanian initiative. On his return to Rome in 1649, Rhodes pleaded for the creation of apostolic vicars directly attached to the Propaganda Fide — an initiative that would lead to the foundation of the Paris Foreign Missions (MEP) in 1658-1659 and the appointment of Francois Pallu as apostolic vicar of Tonkin (appointed 29 July 1658; territory fixed by the bull of Alexander VII of 9 September 1659)^[52].

From then on, and for three centuries, the MEP would be Rome's operational arm in Indochina: generations of missionaries were sent there, and many left their lives there — ten Frenchmen are among the 117 martyrs of Vietnam canonized in 1988, as ten are among the 103 martyrs of Korea canonized in 1984^[53].

The 117 martyrs canonized by John Paul II (19 June 1988)

Vietnam is, after Japan, the continent of Asia's Catholic martyrdom. Between 1745 and 1862, under the Trinh and Nguyen emperors, Minh Mang (1820-1840), Thieu Tri and Tu Duc (1847-1883), Christians suffered systematic persecution — edicts, burnings, beheadings, ritual mutilations (lang tri), forced apostasies by trampling on the crucifix.

Historians estimate that between 130,000 and 300,000 Vietnamese Catholics were killed for their faith between 1745 and 1862^[54]. On 19 June 1988, John Paul II canonized 117 of them — a collective group comprising 96 Vietnamese, 11 Spanish Dominicans and 10 French MEP, including 8 bishops, 50 priests and 59 laypeople^[55].

In his homily, John Paul II gave thanks for the witness of the martyrs — Vietnamese as well as missionaries come from countries already rooted in the faith — and recalled that their shed blood remains for the Christians of Vietnam a source of grace for growing in the faith^[56].

The best-known saint of this group, Andrew Dung-Lac (Tran An Dung), Vietnamese diocesan priest born around 1795 and beheaded at Hanoi on 21 December 1839, gives his name to the liturgical memorial: "Saints Andrew Dung-Lac, priest, and his companions, martyrs", celebrated each 24 November.

The Church of Korea has a trait without parallel in all missionary history: it was born with no foreign missionary. In the 18th century, Confucian scholars of the Silhak school ("practical learning"), seeking an answer to the dead ends of Neo-Confucianism, studied Chinese works brought back from embassies to Beijing. Among these books, they discovered the writings of Matteo Ricci — notably The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu shiyi) — and some converted intellectually before any contact with a priest^[57].

Yi Seung-hun and the Beijing baptism (1784)

The historic turning point dates to the winter of 1783-1784: the young scholar Yi Seung-hun, twenty-five years old, accompanied his father on the annual diplomatic mission to Beijing. On the advice of his friends (notably Yi Byeok), he had himself baptized there by the French Jesuit Jean-Baptiste-Joseph de Grammont under the name of Peter (Petrus), in early 1784^[58].

Back in Seoul in autumn 1784, Yi baptized his own companions and formed an autonomous lay community of about a thousand faithful within a few years — with a "false clergy" (Yi Seung-hun and his companions attributing to themselves the functions of "bishops" and "priests"), later abandoned on the order of the Bishop of Beijing^[59].

The great persecutions of the 19th century

When the Joseon dynasty became aware of the existence of this autonomous Christian community — suspected of Confucian subversion and of loyalty to a "Father of Rome" — it unleashed a succession of four great persecutions:

Saint Andrew Kim Tae-gon, first Korean priest

Andrew Kim Tae-gon was born on 21 August 1821 at Solmoe into a persecuted Catholic family — his father and grandfather were already martyrs. At 14, he was sent clandestinely by the MEP to the Macao seminary, where he studied Latin, theology and philosophy for eight years^[60].

Ordained priest at Shanghai by Msgr Jean-Joseph Ferreol on 17 August 1845, he returned clandestinely to Korea to prepare the arrival of other missionaries. Arrested in June 1846, he was beheaded on 16 September 1846 at Saenamteo, on the banks of the Han River at Seoul. Before dying, aged 25, he cried out before the crowd gathered for the execution:

"It is with great happiness that I am now going to die. Eternal life is about to begin for me. If you want to be happy, become Christians." — Saint Andrew Kim Tae-gon, words reported by the MEP chronicles, September 1846^[61]

The 103 martyrs canonized at Seoul (6 May 1984)

On 6 May 1984, on the bicentenary of the Korean Church, John Paul II travelled to Seoul and there canonized the 103 martyrs of Korea, including Andrew Kim Tae-gon, his father Ignatius Kim, Paul Chong Hasang (layman, son of another martyr) and 10 French MEP missionaries — the first canonization ever celebrated outside Rome in the history of the Church^[62].

In his homily, John Paul II hailed a Church born with no foreign missionary at all, founded entirely by laypeople, and whose flowering today is the fruit of the heroic witness of the martyrs^[63].

In 2014, Pope Francis, during his journey to Korea, in turn beatified 124 other martyrs — mainly of the Sinyu persecution of 1801 — bringing to more than 225 the number of recognized Korean saints and blesseds.

The 19th century is the "great missionary century" for Catholics: collapse of the Padroado, expansion of the MEP, the Spiritans, the Lazarists, the White Fathers, the PIME (Pontificio Istituto Missioni Estere, Milan, 1850), explosion of women's congregations — Sisters of Saint Paul of Chartres in Asia, Daughters of Charity, Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (1877), Helpers Sisters, and so on.

The hidden work of Pauline Jaricot

Behind the scenes, at Lyon, a young woman revolutionized missionary organization. Pauline Jaricot (1799-1862), beatified at Lyon on 22 May 2022 (Card. Tagle, in the name of Francis), founded in 1822 the Work of the Propagation of the Faith: a simple system of "tens" — each participant recruited nine people, who each gave a penny a week — which financed the missions of the whole world. She also imagined in 1826 the Living Rosary, grouping fifteen people to each recite one decade of the chaplet^[64].

Become the Pontifical Mission Societies in 1922 under Pius XI, the Work of the Propagation of the Faith financed for a century the overwhelming majority of Catholic missions in Asia. It illustrates a forgotten truth: Asia's great missionary century is also the century of laypeople mobilized in Europe, and not only of missionaries on the road.

Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, patroness of the missions

The same logic holds for Saint Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897), who died at 24, never left her Carmel but spiritually supported two missionaries — Fr. Maurice Bellieveau in Africa (Sudan) and Fr. Adolphe Roulland in China (Sichuan) — and who wrote:

"My vocation, I have found it at last... my vocation is Love! [...] In the Heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love. [...] Thus I shall be all, thus my dream will be realized!" — Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, Manuscript B, September 1896^[65]

Pius XI proclaimed her universal patroness of the missions on 14 December 1927, on the same footing as Saint Francis Xavier^[66] — a strong theological affirmation: mission is first the work of the Spirit in prayer, and Asia will be evangelized neither by conquest, nor by diplomacy, but first by saints offered up.

The Boxer Revolt and the 120 martyrs of China (2000)

The dawn of the 20th century brought a major Asian drama: the Boxer Revolt (1899-1901). A xenophobic nationalist movement, the Boxers (Yihequan, "Society of the Fists of Justice") targeted Europeans and Chinese Christians, accused of complicity with foreign invasion. Between June and August 1900, more than 30,000 Chinese Catholics were massacred^[67].

On 1 October 2000, John Paul II canonized 120 martyrs of China from the whole 1648-1930 period — including 86 victims of the Boxers; the group comprised 6 bishops, 23 priests, 15 religious sisters, 8 seminarians, 4 catechists, 2 catechumens and 62 laypeople, including the child Andrew Wang martyred at nine years old^[68]. The canonization, chosen on China's national day, provoked a sharp official protest from Beijing — an illustration of the lasting dispute between Rome and popular China.

The hidden Christians of Japan found again at Urakami (17 March 1865)

The 19th century also brought its share of missionary miracles. The most famous is the "discovery of the hidden Christians" at Nagasaki. On 17 March 1865, shortly after the completion of the Oura church dedicated to the 26 martyrs of Nagasaki, peasants from the Urakami district approached Fr. Bernard Petitjean (MEP) and revealed to him, in undertone:

"We all have the same heart as you. Where is the statue of Saint Mary?" — Words reported by Fr. Bernard Petitjean, letter of 18 March 1865 to the MEP Seminary^[69]

For two hundred and fifty years, without priest, without Bible, without liturgy, several tens of thousands of descendants of the 16th-century Christians had discreetly handed down baptism, Marian prayer and the liturgical calendar. Pius IX hailed the news as a miracle^[70]. The site is today listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site (2018).

The drama of communism: China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia

The second half of the 20th century was marked by the communist persecution of Christians in Asia:

• China: Maoist seizure of power in 1949, expulsion of foreign missionaries (1949-1954), foundation of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association in 1957 — which ordained bishops without Roman mandate until the provisional Vatican-Beijing agreement of 22 September 2018. The Chinese Church is today divided between an official Church and an underground Church — about 12 million Catholics in total^[71].
• Vietnam: the Viet-Minh victory in 1954 led to the exodus of nearly 800,000 Catholics from North to South, in Operation Passage to Freedom. After 1975, generalized persecution of the South Vietnamese clergy.
• North Korea: from 1948, the regime of Kim Il-sung systematically eliminated the clergy. The diocese of Pyongyang, once an archiepiscopal see, today has no priest at all; the see is held in absentia by the Archbishop of Seoul.
• Cambodia: under the Khmer Rouge, the Bishop of Phnom Penh Msgr Joseph Chhmar Salas died of exhaustion in 1977 in a labour camp; the Catholic community — some 60,000 faithful in the early 1970s — was almost entirely annihilated under their regime (1975-1979)^[72].

Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)

In counterpoint to these dramas, the Asian 20th century offers one of the most universally recognized figures of modern Catholicism: Saint Teresa of Calcutta (Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu), born on 26 August 1910 at Skopje (then Ottoman Empire, today North Macedonia), entered with the Sisters of Loreto in 1928, sent to Calcutta as a teacher in 1929^[73].

On 10 September 1946, in the train taking her to Darjeeling, she received what she would call "the call within the call": to leave her teaching convent to serve the "poorest among the poor". After two years of discernment, she obtained the authorization of Pius XII in 1948 and founded on 7 October 1950 at Calcutta the congregation of the Missionaries of Charity — which today counts more than 5,500 sisters in 139 countries^[74].

"I was hungry — I was naked — I was homeless — I was unwanted, unloved, uncared for — and it is to me that you did it." — Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Nobel Prize Speech (translated from English), Oslo, 11 December 1979^[75]

Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, beatified on 19 October 2003 by John Paul II, canonized by Francis on 4 September 2016^[76]: Mother Teresa embodies the 20th-century Asian mission in its most stripped-down version — no longer cultural conquest nor martyrdom, but silent service to the poorest, amid the slums of a Hindu metropolis.

The decree Ad Gentes (7 December 1965)

The Second Vatican Council profoundly transformed the Church's missionary doctrine. The decree Ad Gentes ("To the Nations"), promulgated on 7 December 1965 by Pope Paul VI — the day before the Council's closure — was voted by 2,394 votes to 5^[77]. It posits mission as the very nature of the Church:

"Sent by God to the nations to be 'the universal sacrament of salvation', the Church, by virtue of the intimate requirements of her own catholicity and obeying the command of her founder (cf. Mk 16:16), strains with all her effort toward the preaching of the Gospel to all men." — Vatican II, Ad Gentes, no. 1, 7 December 1965^[78]

And further on, the sentence that became foundational:

"By nature, the Church, during her pilgrimage on earth, is missionary, since she herself draws her origin from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit, according to the design of God the Father." — Vatican II, Ad Gentes, no. 2 (Ecclesia peregrinans natura sua missionaria est)^[79]

The decree broke with a model inherited from the 19th century: mission was no longer a "work" reserved for specialists sent from Europe, but the vocation of the whole Church — local Churches, laypeople, religious, priests. It enshrined the necessity of an indigenous clergy, encouraged inculturation and recognized the proper responsibility of the particular Churches of Asia and Africa. More still: for the first time, the Council recognized in non-Christian religions "seeds of the Word" (semina Verbi) — a patristic formula taken up from Saint Justin^[80].

Plane compertum est (1939): Pius XII's belated justice

Even before the Council, Pius XII had taken a decisive decision for the Asian missions: by the instruction Plane compertum est of 8 December 1939, he finally authorized Chinese Catholics to take part in civil ceremonies in honour of Confucius and in ancestor rites, describing these gestures as a "simple manifestation of filial piety" with no religious content^[81].

This was the belated resolution of a debate opened by Matteo Ricci in 1610 and brutally closed by Benedict XIV's Ex quo singulari in 1742. Nearly two centuries elapsed between the prohibition and the authorization. The lesson is severe: the Catholic Church is also a historical body, capable of erring in pastoral judgment without erring in faith. Pius XII implicitly admitted it by speaking of "changed circumstances and mentalities".

Faced with the colonial objection, four names recall that inculturation is no recent invention: from 1582, Domingo de Salazar defended Filipinos at Manila against the abuses of the encomienda; Matteo Ricci made himself a scholar among scholars at Beijing; Roberto de Nobili lived as a sannyasi among the Brahmins of Madurai; Alexandre de Rhodes completed giving Vietnamese its romanized alphabet, still in use today. The violence of the Padroado, of Diamper and of Roman condemnations remains factual; but the same Church already carried, in its missionaries, the method Vatican II would call inculturation.

Ecclesia in Asia (1999): the great mission field of the third millennium

On 6 November 1999, at New Delhi, in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Saint John Paul II signed the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Asia, fruit of the Special Synod for Asia held at Rome from 19 April to 14 May 1998. The text is the culmination of several years of Asian episcopal reflection, and it takes seriously the majority fact: Asia counts nearly two-thirds of humanity, and Catholics represent only about 3% of the continent's population^[82].

"Just as in the first millennium the Cross was planted on the soil of Europe, in the second millennium on American and African soil, may there be, in the third millennium, a great harvest of faith reaped on this vast and vibrant continent." — Saint John Paul II, Ecclesia in Asia, no. 1, 6 November 1999^[83]

The document sets the priorities: presenting Jesus as the unique Saviour, with respect for Asian cultures and religions; promoting interreligious dialogue without relativism; supporting the formation of local clergy; encouraging catechesis incarnated in Asian languages and symbols. It also recalls, against ambient relativism, the primacy of explicit proclamation: without the explicit proclamation that Jesus is Lord, there is no true evangelization — and it is precisely on the continent where this proclamation began two thousand years ago that renewed missionary commitment is needed^[84].

At the start of the 21st century, Catholic Asia presents three quite distinct faces: Catholic majorities (Philippines, Timor-Leste), significant but minority communities (Vietnam, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Lebanon), and suffering or clandestine Churches (mainland China, North Korea, Pakistan).

According to the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2023 (published with the Pontifical Yearbook in March 2025, data as of 31 December 2023), Asia gathers about 11% of the world's Catholics^[85] — in other words, a little more than one Catholic in ten in the world lives in Asia, while within the continent Catholics remain a very small minority.

Three facts deserve attention. First, the vitality of the Korean Church: grown from a very small minority in the mid-20th century to more than 11% today, it has known since 1945 one of the strongest Catholic growths in Asia. Second, the extraordinary stability of the Philippines and Timor-Leste in a mostly non-Christian Asian environment. Finally, the Asian Catholic diaspora — above all Filipino and Indian, but also Vietnamese — so that in many dioceses of Europe, North America and the Middle East, the most active laypeople and priestly vocations today are often of Asian origin.

For Pope Francis, in his journey to Mongolia (August 2023), to Indonesia, Papua, Timor and Singapore (September 2024), Asia remains today's great missionary worksite — not by territorial expansion, but by humble witness in societies where the Gospel remains a minority but where the need for meaning, dignity and hope has never been greater.

To this list will no doubt be added, in the decades to come, the causes underway for: Msgr Francois Pallu (MEP, Tonkin), Cardinal Francois-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan (Vietnam, 13 years a prisoner of the communists, declared Venerable on 4 May 2017), Mother Mary of the Passion (foundress of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary), and Msgr Stephen Kim Sou-hwan (Seoul, +2009).

• The Jesuit Missions in China (1582-1773) — Matteo Ricci, Kangxi's friendship, the Rites Controversy.
• The Jesuit Missions in Japan (1549-1644) — Xavier, Christian daimyo, Tokugawa martyrs, hidden Christians.
• The Evangelization of the American Indians (16th century) — the Western counterpart of the same missionary adventure.
• The Catholic Counter-Reformation (1517-1648) — doctrinal and institutional framework of the great missionary orders.
• Saint Francis Xavier (1506-1552) — detailed biography of the patron of the missions.
• Ad Gentes — the Missionary Activity of the Church — the founding conciliar text of the modern mission.