Cardinal Paul Yu Pin’s “Three Diaspora Moments” (1920s–1970s)

This chapter reexamines the transnational career of Paul Yu Pin (于斌, 1901–1978), a Chinese Catholic cardinal whose life intersected with major transformations in global Catholicism and twentieth-century international politics. Drawing on recent scholarship in global Catholic history and diaspora studies, it comprises three parts analyzing three pivotal “diaspora moments” in Yu’s life, when his movements across borders converged with significant domestic and global upheavals. The first part explores Yu’s education in Rome during the Vatican’s campaign to dismantle colonial religious protectorates and build a native ecclesiastical hierarchy. The second focuses on his role in nationalist diplomacy during the Second World War and the Chinese Civil War, when he mobilized transnational networks to advocate for China, mediate Sino-Vatican relations, and organize missionaries’ resettlement. The third part examines Yu’s activities during the Cold War, when he blended Catholic inculturation with anti-communist nationalism by promoting ancestor rites and shaping trans-Pacific Catholic anti-communist diplomacy. The chapter argues that Yu’s diasporic experiences shaped his agency, allowing him to serve as an intermediary between Church and state, China and the world. Yu, rather than a political opportunist, was a paradigmatic figure of the twentieth-century Catholic diaspora, whose mobility, political engagement, and ideology reverberated across multiple scales of power.