Forty-one baptisms were included in a Chinese Catholic church’s 300-year anniversary celebrations last week.
Thousands of people attended St Francis Cathedral of Xi’an in China’s Shaanxi province four days of celebrations.
The celebrations included music, lectures, a cultural show, the installation of a relic of St Francis of Assisi and the unveiling of a tablet to commemorate the cathedral’s three centuries of history.
There were also art displays featuring the work of different parish groups, portraits of 21 past bishops and a cultural heritage display that showed the early history of the church in China.
“The series of events were designed to remind Catholics not to forget church history and remember the contribution of our earlier missionaries,” Bishop Anthony Dang Mingyan of Xi’an said. Read more