‘Communist China’s unlikely Catholic outpost’

Opening the church door in Baihanluo reveals a large portrait of Pope Francis -- something of a paradox in an ethnically Tibetan area of Communist China.

The village is only reachable on foot or by <g data-gr-id="14">horse,</g> and surrounded by snow-capped Himalayan peaks.

But despite its remoteness French missionaries built the church -- with a curved, Chinese-style roof -- at the end of the 19th century. Pope Gregory XVI assigned Tibet to the Foreign Missions Society of Paris, shortly after China was forced to open its doors following its defeat in the First Opium War.

Heading up the river valleys into the hills, cut off by snows in winter, they established "lost missions" in a still largely traditional and theocratic society.

At <g data-gr-id="13">times</g> it was a bloody cause, with evangelists martyred by monks opposed to Christ invading their Buddhist territory.