Father Lazzarotto, pioneer of relations with China in 1970s, dies at 99
April 17, 2025
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CWN Editor's Note: Father Angelo Lazzarotto, PIME, hailed by the Vatican newspaper as “a pioneer of the first contacts with Catholics in China after the Cultural Revolution,” has died at the age of 99.
Lazzarotto entered the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions in 1940 at the age of 15 and arrived in Hong Kong in 1956, where in time he founded the Holy Spirit Study Center with the future Cardinal John Tong.
In the late 1970s, Father Lazzarotto “began the first, very difficult contacts with what remained of the Catholic Church after the dark years of Communist persecution” during the Cultural Revolution, according to AsiaNews, the agency of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions. In 2011, the Chinese government barred him from entering the country again.
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