CHINA: Where Priests Dared to Tread

Unknown to most, but Buddhism is not the only religion that exists in Tibet. Throughout the region small Catholic enclaves exist nestling in the remote mountains and deep valleys.

Catholicism arrived in the region in the latter part of the 19th century; on a drive by the Foreign Missions of Paris, a major missionary organisation in China, to save the ‘savage’ and ‘primitive’ lands of the Tibetan kingdom.

The advances of the Church were far from welcome, with only half the forty-four priests sent to Tibet surviving. Some succumbed to unknown foreign illnesses, but many met violent ends at the order of the Buddhist authorities. Stories of beheaded missionaries with their heads hanging from Buddhist monasteries as a warning to others are common.