Attedning a Sunday Mass at the St. Francis Catholic Church, Xian, China

This was our first Sunday in Xian for this trip and we looked for a Christian church to attend an Englsh service. However, we couldn’t find an English Protestant church advertising its Sunday Service anywhere. The only English Sunday Worship we did find was a mass conducted at a Catholic church at the St. Francis Cathedral at 3:30p.m. (Wuyi Lu Catholic Church / 五星街天主教堂) located in the Wuxing Lianhu District, Xi'an.

  I was happy that J. would come with us to church.

We went from our hotel together, and arrived by Didi at the St. Francis Catholic church a little after 3:00 PM. We were surprised to find that the church was fully packed and there were no seats left. Fortunately, the ushers brought out some plastic stools so that we could sit at the very back of the church where we had to try very hard to see what was going on.

  This church was quite different from the other ones we visited before. Sitting there, we admired the beautiful combination of European Gothic and traditional Chinese architecture.

At this mass, the church was filled with many young people which was a rare thing to see nowdays in church attendance. I enjoyed the nice hymns and the scripture readings. Though not a Catholic by upbringing, I do like the way the Catholic church organizes its sermons and weekly scripture reading which helps people to learn a lot about the bible and gives the congregants a good foundation of the scriptures if they come to church and follow the reading every week.

At the end of the mass, the Father announced that the church would be holding a welcome party for the university students at 5pm today. I was wondering if J. might attend this activity and that if he would he might be able to connect with the young people there. The mass finished shortly after 4 and we had sometime before the 5 pm meeting.

We went to a famous dumpling restaurant close by and had some very nice dumplings. But we were a few minute late for the 5pm welcoming meeting and the activity had already started.

  Though J. managed to take part in a group activity later, he said that he was not interested in joining the actitivites in the future regularly. Well, we could only try our best to bring people to church but we can't force people to go.

  We went walking around the city wall after dinner and it was really fun discovering so much gong in near the foot of the city wall! Xian is such a beautiful city with so much to see and do! We couldn't wait to explore it further in the next few days!

  RT, Xi'An, China, Autumn 2026