St. Dominic’s Church, Macau: where China’s first Portuguese-language newspaper was proclaimed in 1822

On the Largo de São Domingos, in the heart of Macau, the church of Saint Dominic was founded in 1587 by Spanish Dominican friars. They reached Macau after a journey from Spain that, according to some sources, took them through Acapulco, in Mexico, while others say they came by way of the Philippines first: the sources do not fully agree on the exact route. The first building was of wood, which gave it its traditional Chinese name, rendered variously as «Pan Cheong Miu», the temple of the wooden boards. The present church replaced the original one after at least one rebuilding, but the sources disagree on the date: according to an academic study devoted to the building, the structure seen today dates from, or was radically renewed in, 1721, while other more general sources place it as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century. Contrary to what is sometimes reported, no fire is confirmed as the cause behind the rebuilding. On 12 September 1822 «A Abelha da China», the Bee of China, was proclaimed in the church, regarded as the first Portuguese-language newspaper published in China. In 1834, when Portugal dissolved the religious orders, the church was closed and expropriated, and reopened only in the second half of the nineteenth century. Since 1929 the church has taken into its devotional calendar the cult of Our Lady of Fátima, with an annual procession on 13 May. A complete restoration, finished in 1997, led to the opening, on 23 November of that year, of a Museum of Sacred Art in the three-storey bell tower of the building, which holds about three hundred liturgical and devotional objects dating between the seventeenth and the nineteenth century, among them a seventeenth-century painting of Saint Augustine and two bells of the nineteenth century. The building is named individually within the Historic Centre of Macau, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List on 15 July 2005.