Keeping The Faith.(the cathedral in Cizhong, China)(Brief Article)

In the isolated mountain village of Cizhong, perched above the banks of the Mekong River in Yunnan province, a breathtakingly elegant European- style cathedral rises above the countryside, the legacy of Catholic priests who arrived in the region in 1866. A few families still brew red wine from wild grapes, a skill taught to the locals by French priests. Two thirds of the population is Catholic--about 600 people. Cizhong has no official priest in residence. So the congregation eagerly awaits visits by traveling Catholic fathers--and sometimes postpones the observance of holy days, such as Christmas, until one arrives. "Normally we hold our own services, our own baptisms," says a 75-year-old villager named Ho Zhixiang, the senior layperson. "When a Catholic is about to pass away, sometimes people call me to come to their side."

That the villagers have kept the faith is not the only remarkable fact about this outpost. They also happen to be ethnic Tibetans, who are usually raised as Buddhists from birth. That Catholic missionaries were able to make any inroads at all in this brigand-infested hinterland during the last century is testament to their persistence--and to Cizhong's hard-bitten poverty. Nowadays, says an Asia-based Roman Catholic priest, "more than 4,000 missionaries, both Catholics and Protestants, are in China." But few make it to obscure Tibetan areas of Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, which are adjacent to but no longer considered part of Tibet proper. As a result, some Catholic congregations are quietly dying out. "God has sent you!" exclaimed one wizened 73-year-old Catholic nun in another remote Tibetan village, called Daofu, in Sichuan, when Western visitors arrived unexpectedly. "Are you Catholic?"

Ho, who still speaks ...