Immaculate Conception Church, Jinjia

Jinjia Catholic Church (金家堂, Jīnjiā Táng), at 98 Zunyi South Road, is the Catholic parish church of Changning District. The building you see is a rebuilding of the 1990s, but the congregation behind it has been in the area since 1856.

How did a farmhouse hall become a church?

The Changning gazetteer says the first church was started on 18 June 1856 near Jinjiaxiang (金家巷), then in the farmland along Xianxia Road, by a Father Yang and parishioners including Jin Xirong and Jin Xiuchang. It had eight single-storey rooms, three of them used as the church, and was named for the Miraculous Medal of the Immaculate Conception. It was finished in 1910 and for some years served as a reading room rather than a full church.

A larger church followed in 1935, begun under a foreign priest named Jin (晋). A consecrated parishioner, Jin Yibao, gave more than three mu of land, another parishioner gave two fen, and the congregation raised 300 silver dollars. The Xujiahui mission advanced the shortfall. It took five years to build.

The years of closure and rebuilding

In 1955 the church at Xianxia Road held seven or eight Masses a month. In 1957 it was one of four Catholic churches left open in the county area. In the Cultural Revolution it became a production-team hall and a car-parts warehouse. The diocese recovered it in 1985 and rebuilt it, with work completed in 1995. A later district gazetteer gives the address as 98 Zunyi South Road and the founding as 1916; the two gazetteers do not explain the difference with 1856.

A parish for foreigners too

The church reopened in November 1996 with a Mass led by Bishop Jin Luxian (金鲁贤, Jīn Lùxián) before nearly 300 people. From 2001 it was opened every morning so that nearby Catholics, and foreign Catholics working in the Hongqiao development zone, could pray before the Blessed Sacrament. At the end of 2005 it had two priests and over 1,000 parishioners.

What to look for

A tablet by the entrance commemorates the reopening on 1 November 1996, the feast of All Saints. Next to it is a notice saying the parish runs enquirers’ classes all year round.