Jesus on Chinese Soil

Abstract

This chapter introduces the beginnings of the Chinese Sisters of the Precious Blood in Hong Kong, as Tertiaries of the Italian Canossian Sisters since the early 1860s. It describes a unique, indigenous congregation of religious women in the Hong Kong Church. Also it discusses the special concern of the Roman Catholic Church for the indigenization of the Church in China, as expressed in Pope Benedict XV’s apostolic letter Maximum Illud (1919). This chapter explains in great detail The Rules of the Tertiaries, the spirituality of the Chinese sisters, and the sisters’ work in orphanages, schools, Catholic education, and evangelization. It emphasizes the evolution of the Catholic Church and the contribution of this book to local studies, cross-cultural relations, and the history of the Catholic Church in Hong Kong and China. It reveals the transformation of a minority of Chinese sisters within the minority of the Catholic population in Hong Kong.