The death of Meng Ziwen, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Nanning, deprives China of its oldest prelate and a man whose long life encapsulated the challenges — and personal costs — of practising the faith in a country where the Communist Government still sets limits to religious conduct, despite China’s much-vaunted economic reforms.

In Meng’s case, as with many other Catholics unwilling to accept the authority of the state-approved Church hierarchy, those limits were breached by his strong loyalty to Rome, which acknowledged his faithfulness by clandestinely ordaining him bishop in 1984.

Meng was careful not to use this title in public, so as not to bring more trouble on himself or his flock. He preferred the title “priest” and declined any association with the state-approved Church. This stance was of a piece with decades of quiet disobedience towards the Communist authorities, for which he was severely punished.

Meng was born in Guangxi, a frontier province in the southwest whose people and culture are more distinct than many in China. A large proportion of the population of Guangxi are not Chinese at all, but Zhuang, a Thai-speaking group who are the most numerous of China’s officially acknowledged “national minorities”.

In 1958 the central Government redesignated Guangxi province as the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, apparently in an effort to ensure the loyalty of the local population. Guangxi’s position on the border with what was then French Indochina meant that it was French Catholics who pioneered the missionary effort in the province during the 19th century. Meng Ziwen (also known as Meng Jieren) was born into a Catholic family and baptised in the faith.

Between 1917 and 1927 he studied Latin and theology at a minor seminary in the province before moving to Penang in Malaysia, where he spent six years studying philosophy and theology. He returned to Guangxi in 1935 and was ordained priest in the provincial capital of Nanning the same year. Ten years later he moved to the small town of Wu Ming, where he founded a clinic and school.

The number of faithful increased during this period, despite the protracted war with Japan and the civil war that followed between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government and Mao Zedong’s Communists. But a time of tribulation for the Church lay ahead. Meng was an early casualty of the new regime’s determination to break ties between Chinese Christians and the “imperialist” West, and ensure that the country’s believers were loyal to Mao’s vision of the future.

In 1951 Meng was deemed insufficiently supportive of campaigns to suppress remnants of the old order, and was imprisoned. He spent most of the next 20 years in labour camps until he was released in 1970 on the ground that he was too old for heavy labour.

One of the reasons for Meng’s detention seems to have been his knowledge and advocacy of Chinese medicine, which he practised on the sick whenever he could, including those out of favour with the Communist Government.

In the view of the authorities at that time, this was the kind of execrable behaviour to be expected of a Roman Catholic priest. In 1954 Beijing sought to break the power of the Church hierarchy by creating the Catholic Patriotic Association, which, among other things, was entrusted with the ordination of bishops. Meng was in detention when this rupture occurred but on his release declined to shift allegiance to the new dispensation.

With the death of Mao in 1976, the political climate relaxed and two years later China embarked on the economic reforms that have since transformed the country. Christianity began to increase rapidly in many parts of the country, Guangxi included, where Meng resumed his work as a priest. In the 1980s he worked in the city of Liuzhou, where he managed to reclaim church properties and recruited young believers. He seems to have played a part in encouraging his nephew and great-nephew to be priests.

It was in Liuzhou that the Vatican, through the offices of another bishop appointed by Rome, in 1984 clandestinely ordained Meng Bishop of Nanning. However, Beijing refused to recognise him as such.

Meng did not live to see a reconciliation between the Chinese and the universal Church, which, during the past few years, has on occasion seemed tantalisingly near. It has yet proved a step too far for the Communist Government.

Bishop Meng Ziwen, Catholic Bishop of Nanning, was born on March 19, 1903. He died on January 7, 2007, aged 103