Portal:Christianity/Selected article/October 2010

St. Michael's Cathedral is a Catholic church in Qingdao (formerly Tsingtao), Shandong Province, People's Republic of China; it is also the seat of the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Qingdao. It is located in the oldest part of Qingdao, in Shinan District. It is the largest example of Romanesque Revival architecture in the province. St. Michael's Cathedral is the product of a strong German presence in Shandong Province in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the mid-19th century the European powers forcibly opened China to foreign trade. The Divine Word Missionaries built a church in the Jiaozhou Bay concession in Shandong in 1902, and in 1934 erected the cathedral, which remained nominally under their administration until 1964. In 1942 it came under the control of the Japanese Army, returning to Chinese control when the Japanese left Qingdao in 1945. In the early 1950s, all foreign missionaries, including the Bishop of Qingdao, were either imprisoned or expelled from China, and during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) the cathedral was defaced and abandoned. In 1981, it was repaired and reopened for services, and in 1992 it was listed as a Provincial Historic Building by the government.

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