Ever since the 13th century, Rome began to send envoys to the Yuan Emperor on numerous occasions. Few recorded materials on this missionary work have been found until the time of John of Monte Corvino (1247-1328), a Franciscan who was sent to China in 1291 by Pope Nicholas IV.
As the first Roman Catholic missionary to China, John came to China in 1294 from Quanzhou, traveling to Dadu to meet the Emperor and hand over a letter from the Pope. He obtained per- mission from the emperor to perform religious activities in Dadu, and was able to convert the Nestorian leader Kuo Li Ji Si ofWang Gu Bu, and built a church in that place. In 1302, he built another church with a capacity of 200 not far from the palace. He translated the New Testament, the Psalms and various Latin rituals and prayers into the Mongolian dialect. John adopted about40 children who were aged between 7 and 11 and taught them Greek and Latin. He taught them how to sing psalms and ex- plained Bible stories to them. Eventually, he baptized all of them. In 1307, Rome named him as the archbishop of Han Ba Li (Beijing) and also sent another seven missionaries to China as his assistants. Unfortunately, four died in India en route, but the remaining three all became bishops of Quanzhou in due course.
A letter written by one of the three missionaries, whose name was Andrew, to a priest from his hometown who was teaching in the seminary, stated that he assisted John of Monte Corvino for five years in dealing with church affairs. The Yuan Emperor pro- vided all the daily expenditures, also called alpha, while he was in Beijing. After he became the bishop of Quanzhou, he used the salaries provided by the Emperor to build a "luxurious and com- fortable church with all kinds of offices which were enough for20 colleagues. There are also four other rooms that can be used for high-ranking priests C ‘? He died of illness in 1326 and the Diocese of Quanzhou was dissolved.
Archbishop John managed the Diocese of Beijing for over30 years and claimed to have baptized more than 6,000 people. He died in 1328 at the age of 81. Upon hearing of his death five years later, Pope John XXII (1316-1334) sent Nicholas to Beijing to be the bishop, but he unfortunately died on the journey. Ten years later, in 1338, Pope Pius XII sent Giovani de Marignoli to China. Because of the unstable political situation of the Yuan Empire, however, he quickly returned to Rome. After the found- ing of Ming Dynasty, the Catholic Church in central China passed from the scene simply because most of the Catholics were Mongols.