SINKIANG: SOVIET BRIDGE-HEAD INTO ASIA

Half-a-million Square Miles Now Without Priests
From a Missionary Correspondent
HONG KONG.
Word has just come to hand of the release of Mgr. Loy and four of his missionaries who through Soviet influence have been prisoners since the summer of 1939. This news ends a chapter in mission history.
Their mission field was Sinkiang, one of the largest and most contested Provinces of the Chinese Republic. In area it is about 550,000 square miles, which is more than a fifth of the size of all Europe!
It is Chinese territory yet it borders on India and Tibet on the South; on Afghanistan on the West; on Russia to the North-West and North, and Mongolia on the North-East. It has a population of about 3,000,000; of which 85 per cent. are Turks and Tungans, Mohammedans, and the rest mainly Mongols and Chinese, chiefly Buddhists in religion; there is also a small sprinkling of Christians, chiefly white Russians. Although half the country is desert, it has abundant natural resources and produces cereals, fruits and cotton with the aid of its famous subterranean water supply.
In the days of the Czars the Russians turned covetous eyes upon this neighbour. big territory. Bus it was not till the year 1924 that the Anti-Imperialistie Soviets had penetrated into Sinkiang to such an extent that the Chinese Governor Yang iseng-hsing had to exert ;us influence to prevent the Russian agent from erecting I statue to Lenin (still alive) in Urumchi and turning the Russian Orthodox Church In that city into a theatre.
SINKIANG PAYS DEARLY
This far-seeing official was assassinated. The Chinese then abolished the old-established special rights of the Turks and Mongols. There followed four years of savage fighting. The Chinese eventually re-established their authority but with the aid of Soviet military assistance men and munitions and machines, guns, 'planes and armoured-cars.
Sinkiang has paid dearly for this help. As long ago as 1935 a Mohammedan Turk writing in the Nanking Tienshan complained " The Bolsheviks have occupied our fatherland, have turned our Mosques into Communist meeting-places and entrenched their agents in all official positions " And about the same time another paper wrote that " Old Sinkiang is no more. The Sovietization of Asia is proceeding. First Outer Mongolia, now Sinkiang, and eventually Tibet also will come under the Red Flag with the Hammer and Sickle The Koran and Buddhism will succumb to the Communist oligarchy."
To-day, though still Chinese in name, Sinkiang is economically. politically and culturally a domain of the Soviets, who use it as a starting-point for the dissemination of their views in the Far East.
Russian agents and officials play a major role. In the schools religion is derided before the children. Young people are sent gratis to Tashkent to be educated in Soviet ideology. Officials who attend places of worship are deprived of their posts. Soon little will remain of Islam and Buddhism. The Soviets are antagonistic to religion of every kind.
WORLD'S LARGEST ECCLESIASTICAL AREA
The Catholic missionaries of the Society of the Divine Word inherited a small flock of Catholics from the Scheut missionaries when they took over in 1922. These Christians were chiefly the descendants of Catholics banished to Sinkiang during earlier persecutions under Chinese Emperors.
In 1931 Sinkiang became an independent mission. It is one of the largest ecclesiastical areas in the world. The few missionaries who made their way to its capital required a minimum of 70 days by waggon for the journey. Since 1934 news from these missionary pioneers became rarer and rarer. During the leet few years the outside world heard almost nothing. It was the Bolshevik policy to isolate the missionaries and cut them off from the rest of the world. Not only could they not write letters, they were also prevented from receiving them. Finally the missionaries were kept even from visiting one another.
Their mission house at Urumchi (Tihwa), the capital of the Province, had a garden adjoining a military aerodrome. The local authorities demanded this garden. Then the Fathers were summoned to the Government office. These did not return. The others, including the Prefect Apostolic, the Rt. Rev. Ferdinand Loy, were arrested. Nothing further was heard of them. It was feared they had been killed.
Now the news has come that they, the last missionaries in Sinkiang, have been released, but they have had to leave the Province. They are now working in other mission fields in China. And so to-day, Sinkiang, a region of half a million square miles, is without priests. For the present it is the close of a campaign.
EBB AND FLOW But there is ebb and flow. From other missions in China comes news of more conversions, of the establishment and growth of more native Sisterhoods, the opening of a cathedral.
On the Feast of the Holy Rosary the first hand of twelve of the new Congregation of the Sisters of the Bleseed Virgin of 1Tanyang made their vows.
On the Feast or St. Columban, November 21, the Cathedral in Hanyang city was reopened with Solemn Pontifical Mass. Four years ago the original church was completed and it was considered adequate for years to come. But that was in 1936, and then there were just over 2,000 Catholics in the city.
FEARFUL ORDEAL
Then. in the following year, came the most fearful and prolonged ordeal in the long record of Hariyang's tribulations. From autumn, 1937, the city suffered from airraids. The missionaries stayed. The Sisters nursed the wounded. The old church was turned into a temporary hospital. The priests gave all they could. All the MISsionaries escaped injury, they stayed through it all, relieving pain, battling cholera, giving speedy instruction and baptism to the dying.
In the following autumn the city came within the Japanese lines and the war moved beyond it.
The works of mercy done by the priests and sisters during the months of agony has borne great fruit. As soon as the civilian population returned to the broken old city, the movement towards the Church began again, and with greater impetus than before.
When these Irish missionaries of St Columban came to Hanyang 20 years ago there was no resident priest, the Blessed Sacrament was riot reserved, there was no Catholic institution, there was but a small chapel and 120 Catholics. To-day the city has five parishes, three convents (each with its own chapel), three catechumenates, an orphanage for boys and an embroidery school for girls, and a dispensary as well as two Praesidia of the Legion of Mary (the first in China), and more than 6,000 Catholics! This is an increase of fifty-fourfold in the last 20 years; e 300 per cent. increase in the last four!