St Ignatius’ Shanghai

The Catholic cathedral in Shanghai, China, known there as Xujahui Cathedral, is to celebrate its 100th anniversary this year. David Burke visited it on a trip to the city late in 2009, and sent the main photos on these pages.

The cathedral was designed by English architect William Doyle, and built by the French Jesuits between 1905 and 1910. The Jesuits have had a church on the site since 1608. Once known as ‘the grandest cathedral in the East’, it can accommodate 2500 worshippers, and indeed caters for up to 2000 every Sunday.

In 1966, around the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards vandalised the building, tearing down the spires and smashing the stained glass. For the next ten years it served as a state-owned grain warehouse.

The cathedral was reopened in 1978, and the spires restored in the early 1980s. The first-ever Chinese-language Mass was celebrated there in 1989.

The renovations have continued, with a project initiated in 2002 by the Jesuit Bishop of Shanghai, Aloysius Jin , and coordinated by Fr Thomas Lucas sj from the University of San Francisco and artist Teresa Wo Ye to replace the stained glass. The new windows were fabricated by three nuns, Sisters Wu, Li, and Han, are fabricating the panels, using a specialised glass kiln that was imported from the United States incorporate Chinese characters and calligraphy, and were scheduled to be completed in time for the 2010 World Fair.