After renovation St Joseph’s Chapel at Yim Tin Tsai, Sai Kung won a UNESCO heritage award
All parishioners of Sacred Heart Church, Sai Kung, are invited* to attend the 135th anniversary feast of St Joseph’s Chapel on the island of Yim Tin Tsai this Sunday, 4 May. The Rev. Dominic Chan, whose ancestral home is on the island, will preside over the thanksgiving Mass.
Italian priests Fr Volonteri and Fr Origo began evangelising on Yim Tin Tsai in 1864. The flock they gradually converted were the Chan family of Hakka origin, who settled the island in the 19th century and worked at salt drying, fishing and farming. The family donated a patch of land to the Catholic Church for construction of a chapel and school. The architecture is Italian Romanesque style. Inside the chapel there is a statue of Fr Joseph Freinademetz, credited with establishing the chapel. He was canonised.
Yim Tin Tsai, only 49 acres and 3km from Sai Kung town, means Little Salt Field. Girl Guides have a campsite on the southern part of the island, which is connected by a breakwater to Kau Sai Chau. The school was closed in the 1990s die to lack of children.
UNESCO gave the island chapel the Award of Merit 20 years ago and it is regarded as a Grade 2 historic building by the Hong Kong Antiquities Advisory Board.
*The public is not invited due to limited space in the chapel.
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