Catholic Church of Lhasa


The Catholic Church of Lhasa Also called the Lhasa Chapel, was the first Catholic church in Tibet in China. It was founded in 1725 and disappeared in 1745.
Italian Capuchin priests Francesco della Penna and Domenico da Fano arrived in Lhasa in 1719 with some Capuchin friars. This was followed by a contest of competition with the Jesuit missionary Ippolito Desideri, the Holy See decided in 1721 in favor of the Capuchins who had already obtained the authorization of the Tibetan authorities to build a chapel.
Kelzang Gyatso, the seventh Dalai Lama, authorized the construction of the church on the heights of the city.
The superior of the mission, Francesco della Penna, returned to Rome in 1737, when Pope Benedict XIV gave a letter to the seventh Dalai Lama, and he took the road to Tibet.
The mission had up to 26 converts.
A photo dating from 1956 is in a book by Josef Vaniš and Vladimír SIS. There is a bell with a large crack on its side, as an "L" in reverse, which according to the Jokhang monks would be due to the violence of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution in Tibet.