Hebei priest Sun Quanxin has been lobbying Tianjin officials for the past 13 years in the hope of regaining state-sanctioned Catholic Church properties held by the city government.
The 46-year-old wants to return home and resume preaching in his home town of Cangzhou, rather than writing letters to government departments in Tianjin and Beijing, but does not know when his prayers will be answered.
Father Sun is campaigning for the return of nearly 30,000 square metres of property in the east coast city purchased by the church before 1949 and seized by the government in the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution.
Following a central government decision in 1980 to return confiscated church property in an effort to discourage mainland Christian organisations from relying on foreign donations, the Tianjin municipal government announced in 1993 that it would hand back the properties. Father Sun, who was sent to Tianjin to look after the properties in 1993, has been waiting ever since.
Instead of returning the properties, the city's Religious Affairs Bureau and Real Estate Development Bureau set up the Religious Real Estate Management Company to manage the properties.
Religious workers from at least three other provinces - Henan, Shanxi and Liaoning - have since joined Father Sun's quest to get back the property they say is being managed without their consent.