She Shan Basilica - History

History

The official name of the church is the Church of the Holy Mother in China. The first church on She Shan hill was built in 1863. During the Taiping Rebellion, Jesuit missionaries bought a plot of land on the southern slopes of the hill. A derelict Buddhist monastery had stood on the site. The remaining buildings were demolished, and a small building was constructed as living quarters for missionaries, and a small chapel. At the peak of the hill (where the Maitreya hall had stood), a small pavilion was built in which was placed a statue of the Madonna.

In June 1870, unrest in Tianjin led to the burning of churches there. The Shanghai Jesuits prayed at the statue of the Madonna and pledged to build a church to her honour in return for her protection. Subsequently, construction of the church began. Wood was shipped in from Shanghai, and stone bought from Fujian. All material had to be ported to the peak by hand. The church was completed two years later. This first church was in the form of a cross, and incorporated features of both Chinese and Western architecture. A veranda was placed outside the door, with ten columns. Eight stone lions were placed before the church. In 1894, several ancillary buildings were added. These included a chapel halfway down the hill, a shrine to the Sacred Heart, the Virgin Mary, and St. Joseph. Fourteen Stations of the Cross were constructed along the path to the church.

In 1925, the existing church was found to be inadequate, and it lagged far behind other churches in Shanghai in terms of size and ornamentation. The church was demolished and rebuilt. Because the Portuguese priest and architect (叶肇昌) was very stringent about the quality of construction, the whole project took ten years to finish, and the church was completed in 1935.

In 1942, Pope Pius XII ordained the She Shan Cathedral a minor Basilica. In 1946, the Holy See crowned the statue of Our Lady of Zose (Zose being the Shanghainese pronunciation of She Shan) at the apex of the tower.

After the communist revolution in 1949, She Shan Cathedral was heavily damaged during the Cultural Revolution. The stained glass windows of the church, carvings along the Via Dolorosa, the statue atop the bell tower, and various other works of iconography were destroyed.

In the 1950s, Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei the Roman Catholic bishop of Shanghai was arrested and imprisoned for over 30 years and the Chinese government put the basilica under the control of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and Chinese bishops not recognized by the Vatican, and condemned by the papal encyclical Ad Apostolorum Principis.

After the Cultural Revolution ended, the damage was gradually repaired. The statue was initially replaced with a simple iron cross, and a replacement statue was installed in 2000.

On May 24, 2008 Pope Benedict XVI announced that he had composed a special prayer for Our Lady of Sheshan.