History of the Chinese Catholic community in Singapore

The earliest Chinese Catholic churches in Singapore were established along linguistic or dialectal lines. While sermons were delivered in the vernacular, all masses (services) were celebrated in Latin. The use of Latin in worship continued till the 1960s when all Catholic parishes became tied to districts rather than linguistic affiliation. By this time, all Catholic churches were using English as the main medium of worship while conducting at least one mass in Mandarin. Nevertheless, Chinese dialectal services were still occasionally held in the oldest pioneering Chinese churches as special masses.

The first Chinese Catholics who arrived in Singapore were travellers and sojourners who were among the thousands who made stopovers here throughout the 1820s. There were already many Catholics among the Chinese diaspora in the region, such as in Thailand (Siam) and Penang. These Chinese Christians had formed communities with histories spanning generations. In December 1821, a number of these Chinese and other Christians encountered Father Laurent Imbert (1796–1839), a French missionary of the Société des Missions étrangères de Paris (MEP), who was visiting Singapore on the instruction of Bishop Joseph Florens (1762–1834), the MEP Vicar Apostolic of Siam. It was these few Catholics who requested Fr Imbert to station a resident priest in Singapore. However, the MEP did little more until the next decade.

Establishing a Chinese Catholic mission in town

The first MEP priest to reside in Singapore, Fr Pierre Julien Marc Clémenceau (1806–1864), arrived in August 1832. There was no Catholic place of worship here then. Although he was given a meagre allowance for his own maintenance and mission work, Fr Clémenceau had to rent a room in the house of a Chinese man for his residence and to use as a small chapel. He also set aside a small sum to pay for his Chinese servant from Macau, Jose, who also helped him with his evangelical work with the Chinese.

By October, with the assistance of other MEP missionaries from Penang, and the cooperation of a Spanish priest from the Goa Portuguese Mission, a subscription for a proper chapel was started and a piece of land at Bras Basah Road was secured to establish a Mission Ground on which the new chapel was to be built. With this, proselytisation work among the Chinese also began. In early 1833, Fr Clémenceau was succeeded by Fr Etienne Albrand (1805–1853), who completed the chapel in late May 1833. On 9 June 1833, he blessed and opened the Church of the Good Shepherd. A year later, he added next to the chapel a Mission House, which he used as a place of residence as well as the space he gathered the Chinese for instruction. Fr Albrand engaged a Chinese catechist (religious teacher) who assisted him. Each day, both men went about inviting Chinese men to the Mission House for instruction in the evenings, from eight to ten o’clock. By September 1833, the Chinese Mission had 100 Chinese converts and catechumens (those under instruction). In order to entice them to return for instruction, the catechumens were given tobacco and tea before each session. On occasions, Fr Albrand also provided them with meals out of his own pocket.

The small Chinese Catholic community was made up of both new converts and Christian arrivals from the region and China. They had come from the Nanyang region or from Guangdong province, where the three main linguistic communities were the Hakkas, Teochews, and Cantonese. Hence, they constituted the nucleus of the Chinese Christian community in Singapore in the 1830s. The progress of the Chinese Catholic Mission Station was nevertheless slow in this decade — most Chinese arrivals to the island, including Catholics, were by and large sojourners who were transient.

The Mission Ground became the heart of development for the Chinese Catholic community. A kind of communal centre emerged over a decade. It had their place of worship (chapel), catechumenate (school for converts — House of Doctrine), school (for children), clinic (House for the Sick) and the Mission House, where the head of the community, the MEP missionary, resided. While the MEP could provide free medical care to its members, the Mission Ground also gave the MEP the space and opportunity to provide schooling for the children of the Mission. In 1845, the community raised enough funds to erect its own school house. The Chinese Christian community in Singapore had grown to at least 500 strong in the early 1840s. This was in no small part also due to the arrival of the island’s first Chinese Catholic priest, Fr John Tchu (1783–1848), in 1839. He remained in Singapore till his death on 13 July 1848. It was acknowledged that a great number of Chinese had converted during his time in the Chinese Mission.

Expansion beyond town

After thousands of Chinese gambier and pepper plantations sprung up across Singapore in the late 1830s and early 1840s, hundreds of Chinese Christians also made their way into the interior of the island in search of economic opportunities. In late 1845, Fr Anatole Mauduit (1817–1858), an MEP priest, sought permission from the head of the Singapore Mission, Fr Jean Marie Beurel (1813–1872), to go into the interior to seek out and minister to the Chinese Christians who had ventured there. He found them at the end of Bukit Timah Road, where the road met the Kranji River. He started a mission outpost there in 1846. Together with the Chinese Christians, he erected an attap chapel dedicated to St Joseph. They then built a school and a sick house in July 1847. By 1849, there were more than 500 Chinese Christians at St Joseph’s. The Christians in the interior faced many obstacles besides tropical illnesses, such as the tiger menace across the island, economic uncertainties linked to the cultivation of gambier and pepper, and the wrath of the Chinese secret society members who were taking shelter within the jungles of the interior. The secret societies carried out their first attack against the interior Chinese Christians in 1849. This culminated in an even greater island-wide attack in 1851, when most of the island’s Christian plantations were razed to the ground. It has been said that 500 Chinese Christians were massacred in this outrage. In 1852, St Joseph’s was relocated to its present site along Bukit Timah Road. It was from this site that the Chinese Christians in the interior extended the Mission further north. In early 1862, the resident priest at St Joseph’s, Fr Augustine Perie (1832–1892), started another outpost at Kranji. He erected and opened a new place of worship named Chapel of St Mary on 8 September 1862. Unfortunately, the new outpost prospered only for a few months before an “accidental” fire razed it in early 1863. Thereafter, Fr Perie took his evangelical work across to Johor. He crossed over to Pontian in southwest Johor to establish another Chinese Catholic colony, which thrived till the end of the 1870s. For the rest of the 19^th century, the Chinese Catholic village at St Joseph’s remained a small, quiet farming community that came to life only during its annual St Joseph’s feast day, when thousands from across the island made their “pilgrimage” to this far away church.

Meanwhile, in early February 1853, the MEP erected a small attap chapel at the end of Serangoon Road which could accommodate 100 worshippers. Christened St Mary’s Church, it was rebuilt in 1901 and renamed the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This new church could hold up to 1,000 parishioners. Still, this mission station was too small to require a permanent missionary to be stationed there. Real progress at the Serangoon mission had been made only from the 1870s. A regular Chinese Catechism School was established at the station in 1872 and its catechist, Lim Chun Seng, came directly from China. It was from Nativity that MEP priests ventured into Johor Bahru to establish yet another Chinese Mission station. By 1903, the Chinese church at Serangoon had grown to 700 strong while its outpost in Johor Bahru had 350 Chinese Christians.

From Mission to Church

The evolution of the Chinese Catholic Mission into the Chinese Catholic Church began with relocating the Church of the Good Shepherd diagonally across the road from the old Mission Ground in 1846 to 1847. While all Catholics of the French Mission from thence worshipped in the new church, the Chinese Christians continued their non-worship activities at the old Mission Ground. The original chapel became a school for the Chinese Catholic community. Then, after the Christian Brothers arrived in 1852, half of the old Mission Ground, the portion fronting Bras Basah Road, was given to the Brothers’ School (St Joseph’s Institution) while the rest of the land between Queen Street and Waterloo Street was used exclusively by the Chinese Catholic Mission. It was this delineation in the 1860s that essentially paved the way for the Chinese Christian community to finally erect the Church of Sts Peter and Paul, a place of worship of their own. The missionary given the colossal task of building the Chinese Catholics their own church in town was Fr Pierre Paris (1822–1883). Fr Paris was aided by a wealthy and influential Chinese Christian, Pedro (Peter) Tan No Keah, who provided the necessary funds.

While the construction of Sts Peter and Paul commenced in August 1867, Fr Paris also took care of the Chinese Mission at Serangoon. Every Sunday morning, he would walk the length of Serangoon Road to say mass for his flock there (St Mary’s) before returning to town to minister to the Indian Christians who congregated at the old Mission Ground. It was through the zeal and industry of Fr Paris that saw the Chinese church in town and Serangoon flourish. By 1900, the number of parishioners at Sts Peter and Paul had grown to 2,200 from 795 in 1883.

The Cantonese and Hakka Christians at Sts Peter and Paul had become so numerous in the 1890s that they began clamouring for a church of their own. In 1895, after a short visit by a Cantonese priest from China, they were granted their request, and a separate Cantonese Mission was created in 1895 with its own services, although they remained under the same roof with the others at Sts Peter and Paul. Through the efforts of three prominent members of Sts Peter and Paul — Chan Teck Hee, Low Kiok Chiang, and Chong Quee Thiam — a piece of land at Tank Road was purchased in 1903 to build a new Hakka-Cantonese parish. The foundation stone of the new Sacred Heart church was laid on 14 June 1908, and by 11 September 1910, the edifice was completed, blessed, and opened. By the mid-1920s, there were 1,300 parishioners at the Church of the Sacred Heart.

Evangelical work with the Hokkiens also began after 1900 but saw little progress. Although there were several hundred Hokkien Catholics worshipping at Sts Peter and Paul at this time, the MEP added few converts among them. So, it decided to build the Hokkien Christians their own parish to encourage more conversions. In 1925, Fr EJ Mariette (1863–1928) and Fr Stephen Lee (1896–1956), priests of the Chinese Mission, purchased a piece of land at Bukit Purmei for the endeavour. They then assembled 11 of the wealthiest Chinese Catholics of the island, the most prominent Teochew Christians of Sts Peter and Paul, to form a church building committee to commence fundraising efforts for the new Church of St Teresa. To give this Hokkien parish a better chance of success, the MEP decided to build a new Catholic enclave around the church. In 1934, the Chinese Mission acquired approximately seven acres of land on Bukit Purmei hill to build this Catholic village that was eventually named Bukit Teresa.

The Chinese Mission outside of town also saw significant developments in the pre-war years. In 1906, the MEP added a new outpost at Punggol (17 milestone) when 100 parishioners of the Nativity Church moved closer to the coastline. There, the MEP priest Fr Jean Casimir Saleilles (1852–1916) erected a double story house for them. The ground floor served as a chapel as well as a school for the Chinese in the district. By this time, Serangoon Catholic parish was already touted as the Catholic oasis of the island, where a thriving Chinese Christian enclave had taken root. By 1916, the parish of the Nativity had grown to 1,200. Hundreds of Chinese Catholic families who had farms and bred livestock lived in this enclave. Many of the hired hands at these farms, together with numerous Chinese labourers in the thriving fishing industry at the waterfront, converted to Catholicism and increased the number of Catholic marriages in the district from the 1890s. Such was the success of this Catholic community that the MEP established a minor seminary here in 1925 to train young Chinese Catholic men for the priesthood.

Another Chinese Catholic enclave was created in 1927, when hundreds of Catholic refugees from Swatow arrived. Wee Cheng Soon, a Catholic contractor, initially housed them in workmen’s quarters at his construction site before finding employment for up to 100 of them. By 1928, with the help of Fr Stephen Lee, 49 families from this group were able to secure grants from the British government to clear and cultivate land in Mandai. There, they built new homes and were self-sufficient. A Chinese Catholic village, an outstation of St. Joseph’s, was thus born. In 1935, Fr Lee, with the help of Lee Kheng Seng and Lee Keng Guan, two prominent Chinese Catholics of Sts Peter and Paul, built a small wooden chapel for them in Mandai dedicated to St Anthony of Padua.

Converts, families and the Chinese Catholic church

By the 1920s to 1930s, most of the major Chinese Catholic parishes of Singapore had been well established and were no longer just mission stations or outposts. There were several salient characteristics of this Chinese church. For one thing, the Chinese church was composed of domiciled families which added to church growth annually through childbirth within the community, and not just through evangelism and conversion. As a case in point, there were 100 to 120 infant baptisms a year at Sts Peter and Paul from 1902 to 1936. By 1903, the population in that parish had grown to 3,000.

Another trend in the pre-war years was the growing number of English-educated Chinese within the Chinese Catholic Church. While this segment of the community had been the minority at first, by the first half of the 20^th century, many Chinese Catholics had attended English Mission schools. Of course, this could have posed a real obstacle to Church cohesion, but the fact of the matter was that the Chinese Catholic church was multilingual. While Malay was the lingua franca in Singapore and English Catholic schools may not have instructed in the vernacular, local-born Chinese were naturally born into a dialectal mother tongue which they did not unlearn. Furthermore, from the early 20^th century, the Chinese schools of the Mission, for example the Sino-English schools, instructed in both Mandarin and English. Hence, there had been more mixing than separation even when the Church was organised along linguistic and ethnic lines in the pre-war years.

As a case in point, the first local born Chinese to be ordained a priest, Fr Michael Seet (Seet Kiam Juay, 1883–1946), was the son of Seet Twa Tee, the Teochew catechist at Sts Peter and Paul who had served the parish for more than 30 years. After getting an English education from St Joseph’s Institution, Fr Seet entered training at Penang in 1899 and was ordained at Sts Peter and Paul on 2 July 1911. He was effectively bilingual and faced no problem as a priest of the Chinese Mission. In 1925, when the minor seminary was established at Serangoon, a handful of Chinese Catholics started training for the priesthood locally. One of these pioneering local priests was Fr Moses Koh (1903–1971). Before joining the priesthood, he was a teacher at St Joseph’s Institution – English-educated. He was also ordained at Sts Peter and Paul.

As Chinese Catholic parishes in the post-war years became increasingly constituted by local born members instead of immigrant arrivals, the Chinese Catholic churches started to transform fundamentally. By the mid-1950s, the Catholic Church in Singapore stopped planting churches along ethnic or linguistic lines. Part of this change was spurred on by Singapore’s urban renewal initiatives during its early days of nation building; the new townships created did not follow ethnic lines. It was also in this decade that Chinese-dialectal education was no longer popular among many Chinese. Mandarin had also become the mode of instruction for post-primary Chinese education instead of dialects. As such, the Catholic Diocese of Singapore geared church growth from the 1960s by adapting to the social-urban changes of the day. The final impetus for change came in the decade when Vatican reformed the masses for the worldwide Church; no more were Catholic churches required to say masses in Latin and only have sermons in local languages. This allowed the Singapore Diocese to have masses entirely in local languages. It was at this point that the Singapore Church officially made all parishes district based and use English as the main language of masses, while allowing vernacular masses to be said as well. In this context, while the Chinese Catholic churches also reformed, their communities remained intact. At the same time, as new parishes were established in New Towns, Chinese Catholics who resettled in these places were able to continue worshipping in Chinese masses, albeit, not in the Chinese vernacular dialect but in Mandarin. Dialectal services are still occasionally held in the original Chinese churches on special parish feast days.