Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church,. commonly referred to as Catholic Church of Yerkalo or Yanjing Catholic Church,. is a
Catholic church building
A church, church building or church house is a building used for Christian worship services and other Christian religious activities. The earliest identified Christian church is a house church founded between 233 and 256. From the 11th thro ...
located in Yerkalo (, ), a village between 2650 and 3109 meters above sea level at the southern end of
Markham County (
Chamdo
Chamdo, officially Qamdo () and also known in Chinese as Changdu, is a prefecture-level city in the eastern part of the Tibet Autonomous Region, China. Its seat is the town of Chengguan in Karuo District. Chamdo is Tibet's third largest city ...
,
Tibet Autonomous Region) in present-day China. It has been subjected to the control of the state-sanctioned
Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association since 1957.
History
It was founded as a
chapel in 1865 by
Félix Biet
Félix Biet (1838 in Langres, Haute-Marne – 1901 in Saint-Cyr-au-Mont-d'Or) was a French missionary from Paris Foreign Missions Society and naturalist.
Life
Biet was born in 1838. He was ordained as a priest in 1864. He was next sent to Tats ...
and
Auguste Desgodins, French missionaries of the
Paris Foreign Missions Society, and dedicated to
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, patroness of the parish of Yerkalo. The church is referenced in Adrien Launay's as . The mission of Yerkalo was based in
Xinjiang but some of its missionaries opted to proselytize in Tibet. Within a few years, Tibetan marauders supported by Buddhist lamas killed 10 priests and destroyed all but one Catholic mission which was based in Yerkalo.
Bringing with them thirty-five of their faithful, having been expelled from the main mission of Bonga in Yerkalo, conquered by the
Qing dynasty, were legally established in some plots of land with the complicity of the population and silence of local officials. Historically, China and Tibet disputed the possession of the Yerkalo saline wells, which passed from one side or the other of the Sino-Tibetan border. Finally, in 1932, the village was placed under the Tibetan Government in
Lhasa. In 1939, the parish of Yerkalo received devotional statues of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and of
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus.
According to the Xinhua news agency, the establishment of a small Catholic parish in Tibet was not an easy task. Enmity from the local
Tibetan Buddhist monks from the
Karma Gon Monastery
Karma Gon Monastery, ( ; ) the original monastery of the Karma Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism, was founded in the 12th century by Düsum Khyenpa, the 1st Karmapa Lama in eastern Tibet at the age of 76.
Karma Gon (''karma dgon'', also ''Karma Da ...
culminated in the killing of one of Father Biet's successors,
Maurice Tornay
Maurice Tornay (31 August 1910 – 11 August 1949) was a Swiss Roman Catholic priest of the Canons Regular of Saint Augustine – of the Hospitallers of Saint Nicholas and Grand-St-Bernard of Mont Joux branch – who served as part of the missions ...
in August 11, 1949.
Architecture
The exterior of the church features traditional
Tibetan design while the interior has European
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
designs. The church holds weekly services in the Tibetan language. As of 2014, the church had one priest, two sisters and serves a estimated 559 worshippers around the area.
See also
*
Catholic Church in Tibet
The Catholic Church is a minority religious organization in Tibet, where Tibetan Buddhism is the faith of the majority of people. Its origin dates from the 17th century, when António de Andrade, a Portuguese Jesuit through the , introduced Catho ...
*
Catholic Church in Sichuan
*
Catholic Church of Lhasa
The Catholic Church of Lhasa Also called the Lhasa Chapel, was the first Catholic church in Tibet in China. It was founded in 1726 and disappeared in 1745.
History
Three Capuchin missionaries arrived Lhasa in 1708 and were later joined by anothe ...
*
Sacred Heart Church, Zhongding
*
History of European exploration in Tibet
Notes
References
Bibliography
*
{{Christianity in Sichuan
Yerkalo
Yerkalo
19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in China
Chamdo