BEIJING (Agenzia Fides): The parish of Xi Tang [Church of the West] in Beijing, China celebrated the 300th anniversary of its foundation on February 11, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, by inviting people to make a spiritual pilgrimage tomorrow, February 11.
During the two-hour spiritual pilgrimage, despite being thousands of kilometres away, Chinese Catholics were be able to immerse themselves in the collective spiritual atmosphere that reigns in Lourdes, and prayed “for themselves, for their families, for the Church, for the nation and for the world marked by the sufferings of war, the pandemic, the earthquake…. invoking graces and healings through the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes.”
Xi Tang, is one of four largest Catholic churches in central Beijing, and the only one not founded by Jesuits. Its founder Italian Father Teodorico Pedrini of the Congregation of the Mission [Lazarists]. The land on which the church stands was bought by the Lazarists, who later donated the complex to the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith—or Propaganda Fide [now called the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples].
In 1730, the church was seriously damaged by a strong earthquake that rocked the Chinese capital, killing more than 100,000 people. Completely destroyed in 1811 and rebuilt in 1867 after the Opium Wars, the church was destroyed again in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion and was rebuilt again in 1912.
After decades of closure, the church reopened its doors in 1994. Inside, next to the entrance door, a commemorative plaque in Latin and Chinese traces the history of its founding.
