The Southern Cathedral or Nantang was built in 1703. It was formerly erected on the site of the house where the missionary Matteo Ricco lived. The building standing today is the fourth Southern Cathedral, the other three were destroyed in the past. While in 1979, the Southern Cathedral, or St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Church, at Xuanwumen, was the only place Beijing Catholics could attend masses, with the biggest attendance being no more than 80. Nowadays, the Eastern Cathedral, the Church of St. Joseph, is also open. The average attendance at the two cathedrals is 400 on weekdays, 2, 000 on Sundays and more than 15, 000 for Easter and Christmas services. The church is now fully functioning. It does baptisms, confessions, Holy Communions, confirmations, weddings, ordinations, and last rites. Every year the church baptizes 300 people, confirms 200, and marries 100 couples. Both people wanting to be married by the church must be Catholics. Catholicism was introduced into China in 1582, during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) . It began to develop after the Opium War in 1840, and by 1949 there were about 3 million Catholics in China. A Catholic congress was held in Beijing in July 1957, which announced the founding of the China Patriotic Catholic Association.

Nowadays, there are about 40, 000 Catholics, 14 Catholic churches, 22 Catholic priests and 70 other clerics in Beijing. Besides, Beijing has two Catholic colleges with more than 100 students and a convent.
China now has more than 3, 900 churches and places of prayer open to Catholics and over 30 dioceses across the country have self-elected and self-ordained bishops or assistant bishops. Since 1986, national and local Catholic seminaries in China have trained more than 1, 000 priests, some of whom were sent abroad to study. Seminaries have been set up in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi'an and Shijiazhuang. The Theological and Philosophical College of the Catholic Church in China located in Beijing is the highest and most prestigious. At present, there are about 700 students studying in Chinese Catholic colleges and the dioceses of Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Nanjing, Shenyang, Guangzhou and Guizhou have also trained a lot of young sisters. The principle of "independence, self-reliance, and self-administration of churches" is the historical choice and the right of the Chinese Catholic Church. The Chinese Catholic Church used to have a semi-colonial status, as more than 90 per cent of its bishops were foreigners before 1949. This situation didn't change until its patriotic movement in the 1950s. The church should combine protecting its rights and interests with safeguarding national sovereignty and dignity. It should also abide by the Chinese Constitution while praising missionary work. From 1988 to 2001, the Chinese Catholic church received tens of thousands of foreign friends.

Bishop Zong Huaide, Chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and Acting Director of the Administrative Commission of the Catholic Church in China said: "We will continue to develop friendship with the Catholics and people of other countries on the basis of mutual respect, equality, friendliness and non-interference on each other's internal affairs. "