Joseph Hou Jinde

Hou was born in 1918. He was ordained a priest in 1945 by Bishop Joseph Cui Shouxun. In 1947, he studied at Fu Jen Catholic University in Beijing and then taught at a teacher's college for two years. Bishop Joseph Cui Shouxun died in the early 1950s, and was succeeded by Communist-nominated Bishop Wang Shouqian in 1958. Wang died in 1964 and no more bishops were appointed. During the Cultural Revolution, he forced to work in the fields instead of preaching Catholicism. He was released in the early 1980s. He was elected administrator of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Shunde in 1987, and nominated as bishop there in the following year. On October 28, 1989, he was ordained Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Shunde without a papal mandate, Bishop Peter Chen Bolu was chief secretary. It was the first bishop in the "open church" conducted in Chinese, previously it was always in Latin. He died on May 22, 1994.