Inaugurated on the solemnity of the Epiphany in Hong Kong, it stands under the historic building of the parish of St. Joseph in Hong Kong, entrusted to PIME for decades. In a neighborhood that is rapidly expanding due to the arrival of many new inhabitants from mainland China. The parish priest Father Pietro Paolo Dossi: «A new missionary challenge»
Hong Kong now has its own underground church. But it is not, in this case, a metaphor to indicate that part of the Chinese Church which, having sworn loyalty to the Vatican in the 1950s, has never aligned itself with the Catholic Patriotic Association led by the Communist Party. It is a building which, “in the absence of building space, literally develops underground”, as explained by PIME missionary Pietro Paolo Dossi, parish priest of the parish of San Giuseppe in the Fanling district of Hong Kong, just two kilometers from the border with mainland China.
In reality, a “historic” church already existed in Fanling, where there was a small Catholic presence since 1926. But it was from 1949, when the bishop commissioned the PIME missionary Ambrogio Poletti to carry out his service here, that the community developed progressively. At that time there were only a few dozen Catholics and they gathered for celebrations in the places of what is now a parish school. In 1953, on the land donated by one of the faithful, Chu Yan Kit, work began on what would later be called the church of St. Joseph: a building «built with local stones, squared, irregular and all different, which recalls the church of living stones that Jesus speaks of in the Gospels”, explains Father Dossi, who is also PIME’s regional treasurer.
Five years ago, as the renovation work on the ancient church began, the construction project of the new underground structure also began, connected to the ground level “with escalators and elevators”. A necessity dictated by the fact that «there is no longer any building space in the district – says the PIME missionary -. But the community continued to grow and the diocese approved the construction of a larger church.” Today there are around 200 families taking part in the Sunday celebrations and the whole parish has prepared for the inauguration of the new underground church, which took place today on the solemnity of the Epiphany.
«For six months, every first Mass of the month, we did a different activity, retracing the history of the old church and waiting for the arrival of the new one as if it were a return home», says Father Dossi. While waiting for the completion of the spaces, in fact, the community of the parish of Fanling moved into the rooms of a school both to carry out parish activities and for Eucharistic celebrations. «In recent weeks, however, we have created a 500-piece puzzle with the image of five loaves and two fish, recalling the episode narrated in the Gospel of Mark, in which Jesus says to the disciples: “You yourselves give them something to eat” . Behind each piece, everyone has written a prayer, as a sign of a community that decides to enter a new place and to renew itself, in turn, on an interior level.”
The final piece was laid today by Cardinal Stephen Chow, on the occasion of the opening of the church. The northern district of the New Territories of Hong Kong is an area of dense urban development: «In recent years, dozens of buildings have been built near here», continues Father Pietro Paolo, originally from Bergamo and resident in Fanling, where he takes care of the parish together to the Thai PIME missionary Phongphan Wongarsa. «They are buildings with forty floors each, and on each floor there are 32 apartments». Making a quick calculation, the priest estimates that around 30 thousand people will arrive in the areas surrounding the parish in the coming years. These are mostly commuter students and government workers who come from mainland China. “In recent years we have increasingly heard Mandarin spoken instead of Cantonese,” admits the missionary.
Since Beijing imposed the national security law on Hong Kong in 2020, which punishes any act of “secession, sedition and subversion” against the local government, the repression of any type of dissent against mainland China has increased. Human rights organizations have repeatedly denounced the erosion of freedom and the creation of a climate of fear.
At the same time, Beijing has more subtly initiated various “sinicization” operations of the city, which, “returned” by the United Kingdom in 1997, tried to develop its own identity independent of the former colonizers and the central government. «But pessimism is strong – comments the PIME priest -. News of the suicides of boys and girls are commonplace and in general there is a great lack of confidence in the future. Many families from our parish, after the events of 2020, also went abroad.”
Fanling’s parishioners are all Hong Kongers, plus around a hundred Filipino women, almost all employed as domestic workers, while the Chinese present emigrated here between the 1950s and 1960s. This migration also represents an ever new missionary challenge for the PIME priests: “We have not yet reached the Chinese who have moved to the district – concludes Father Dossi -, but they could be the ones we turn to in the future”.