The abandoned churches of Sai Kung: how Italian missionaries established Hakka congregations in Hong Kong
Some lovingly maintained, others little more than rubble, the Catholic churches dotted around Sai Kung were once home to enthusiastic Hakka congregations, ministered to by hardy Italian missionaries, writes Stuart Heaver.
Italian priests were once a common sight in what is now Sai Kung Country Park, tramping between Hakka villages, ministering to the spiritual needs of an enthusiastic flock. Few traces remain of the missionaries, however, except for a handful of small churches, some abandoned, concealed in the farthest reaches of the countryside.
For more than a century, devout young men from the Seminary of Foreign Missions of Milan (now the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions) walked for mile upon mile along country paths to administer mass, or conduct a wedding or funeral.
It all started 150 years ago, on Pentecost Sunday 1866, when the first residents of the area were baptised by Father Gaetano Origo in Sai Kung, when what is now the town was a small, remote village on the southern periphery of the Qing empire. The missionaries set up a school and church (which was in use until 1959) in the village, near the Tin Hau Temple, as a base from which to access the small Hakka settlements dotted over the southern part of the Sai Kung Peninsula. To reach Sai Kung in the first place, they would have had to either take a five-hour junk ride from Hong Kong Island or hike across the mountains from Kowloon.
The Catholic history of Sai Kung was revisited last month, at the 135th anniversary celebration of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Chapel, a white-washed stone building located on a gentle rise on the outskirts of the isolated village of Pak Sha O. A special mass was read by Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun and the congregation spilled out of the little church - the fifth oldest of 11 that can still be found in the area - onto the grounds outside, to sing hymns in the cold.
The congregation was not made up of local Hakka villagers, though, because the original inhabitants all left decades ago, to seek a better standard of living in Sai Kung town, Tai Po or, more commonly, Britain. The village is now populated by a handful of expatriates seeking a tranquil lifestyle deep in the countryside.