ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the appointment by the Vatican of the Apostolic Visitor to the Overseas Chinese (AVTOC) – Bishop Carlo van Melckebeke – in the early 1950s in the context of the Cold War. The AVTOC was based in Singapore and was responsible for pastoral matters relating to overseas Chinese Catholics worldwide. The chapter explores how the creation of this office by the Holy See was reflective of both the trauma of expulsion from China that many Catholic clergy had experienced in the early 1950s and of Vatican anxieties about the potential for communism to attract adherents amongst overseas Chinese Catholics. While the chapter explores the origins and development of this office, it also suggests that the context of the AVTOC’s creation hampered the office’s work over the long-term, as ideas about overseas Chinese Catholicism developed in new directions (and in different societies) in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It also details how political changes in societies where sizeable overseas Chinese Catholic communities existed (e.g., Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines) ultimately undermined the notion of a single overseas Chinese Catholic community.
