Tag: Tibetan history

Tibet’s First Indigenous Catholic Priest

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AI-generated historical illustration.

In the late nineteenth century, a Tibetan family set out on pilgrimage to Khawakarpo, one of the most sacred mountains in the Tibetan world. They were poor, grieving, and apparently had no intention of abandoning the religion into which they had been born. By the time their journey was over, however, one of the family’s sons was on a path that would make him an extraordinary figure in Tibetan religious history.

His name was Télesphore Hiong. In 1891, he became what Catholic missionary records describe as the first Tibetan Catholic priest.[1] His largely forgotten story disproves the familiar Western image of Tibet as an almost uniformly Buddhist civilization. Long before the Chinese Communist takeover, small Christian communities existed along Tibet’s eastern frontier, and their relationship with the dominant Buddhist institutions around them was sometimes peaceful and sometimes violently hostile. Hiong belonged to that little-known world.

The most detailed surviving Catholic account places the beginning of Hiong’s story around 1860 in Derge, in the eastern Tibetan region of Kham. His parents were reportedly relatively prosperous pastoralists until bandits attacked the family, killed his father, and stole their livestock. His mother was left alone with six children. Deprived of the animals on which their livelihood depended, the family fell into poverty and became beggars.[2]

Eventually, Hiong’s mother set out with her children on pilgrimage to Khawakarpo, the great snow mountain on the Tibetan-Yunnan frontier that has long been regarded as sacred. It was a journey firmly situated within the Tibetan religious world, yet according to the missionary account, the event that redirected the family’s spiritual trajectory did not occur at the sacred mountain. It happened unexpectedly along the way.

While passing through Yerkalo, one of the children was badly bitten by a dog and was taken to a Catholic missionary for treatment. The injury forced the family to remain there. During this prolonged stop, the Catholic account says, the pilgrims encountered Christianity, studied the religion, and eventually converted. At baptism, one of the sons received the Christian name Télesphore and would eventually become Tibet’s first indigenous Catholic priest.[3]

The missionaries apparently recognized unusual ability in the young Télesphore. According to his Catholic biography, he attracted attention for his intelligence and religious devotion and was sent first to Tatsienlu, today’s Kangding, and then to the minor seminary at Mouping. In 1891 he was ordained a priest.[4]

This was significant for a Catholic mission that remained heavily dependent upon European clergy. An indigenous Tibetan priest could speak to Tibetan communities from a cultural position that French missionaries could never fully occupy. Hiong was therefore more than a symbolic convert. After his ordination, he was given responsibility for teaching Latin to a small group of students who accompanied him as he moved among mission stations at Chapa, Mosimien, and Tatsienlu.[5] His work formed part of the larger Catholic attempt to establish a native clergy in the Tibetan borderlands.

European missionaries had spent decades attempting to establish Christianity in Tibetan regions. And now they had a native Tibetan priest in Hiong, traveling among Tibetan communities. In 1906, Bishop Pierre-Philippe Giraudeau sent him to investigate the possibilities for missionary work in the regions of Taofu, Rongmé Tchangcu, and Mowkung. The following year, Hiong and a French priest, Father Charrier, were assigned to evangelize the Taofu region.[6]

Hiong’s story also belongs to the history of Yerkalo, one of the most unusual Christian communities in the Tibetan borderlands. The community grew out of an earlier Catholic settlement at Bonga. According to the mission’s own history, that settlement was destroyed in 1865 after years of conflict and persecution. Some of the displaced Christians eventually settled along the Mekong, where missionaries purchased land and established the Yerkalo mission around 1867. The founding group was not ethnically uniform. The mission history specifically notes that it included several Chinese Christians.[7]

Yerkalo’s existence was precarious. The mission history records repeated destruction, expulsions, and conflicts during the nineteenth century. French diplomatic intervention sometimes helped missionaries return to their posts, an important reminder that the Catholic missions themselves did not exist outside the political struggles of the period. European missionaries operated within a world in which religious expansion, diplomatic pressure, Chinese authority, Tibetan political power, and monastic interests could become entangled.[8]

The violence became particularly severe in 1905. According to the Yerkalo mission history, four missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions Society and eleven Christians from Yerkalo were massacred by emissaries of the lamas, while the residence and chapel were burned.[9] The episode forms part of a documented period of anti-Christian violence in the Tibetan borderlands.

This history sits uneasily beside the version of Tibet that later became dominant in much of the Western imagination. Tibet came to be represented through images of remote monasteries, meditation, compassion, peaceful monks, and timeless spiritual wisdom. Those elements are real, but they can obscure another historical reality: Tibetan Buddhist institutions existed within powerful political and social systems, possessed material interests, and often came into violent conflict with religious competitors.

The very existence of communities such as Yerkalo challenges the tendency to treat Tibetan identity and Tibetan Buddhism as interchangeable. Some Tibetans converted to Christianity and still identified as culturally Tibetan. Télesphore Hiong embodied that uncomfortable fact more dramatically than almost anyone. He spent much of his life helping a foreign-born religion establish itself among his own people.

Hiong’s Tibetan identity did not protect him when political turmoil engulfed the region. During the upheavals surrounding the fall of China’s Qing dynasty, his Catholic biography reports that he was detained at Louho, placed in chains, and threatened with death by Tibetan rebels. Chinese troops eventually freed him, after which he returned to Tatsienlu and directed the school for catechists until 1920.[10]

Hiong continued serving the Catholic mission for decades. By 1930, when he was around seventy, he retired to Mosimien and later returned to Tatsienlu. He died there on February 6, 1945, reportedly at the age of eighty-five.[11] More than half a century had passed since his ordination.

Today Télesphore Hiong is virtually unknown outside the archival history of Catholic missions in Tibet. That obscurity is telling because Western accounts of Tibetan history have often been organized around competing political narratives. One depicts old Tibet primarily as a spiritual Buddhist civilization later devastated by Chinese Communist occupation. The Chinese state, by contrast, has long emphasized oppression and backwardness under the old Tibetan system. Both frameworks can flatten people whose lives do not fit comfortably within them.

Tibetan Christians are among those people. Their existence raises questions rarely encountered in popular accounts of Tibet. What happened when Tibetans rejected Buddhism? How freely could they practice another religion? To what extent were conflicts involving Christian converts driven by religion, and to what extent were they connected to the political involvement of European missionaries and Chinese or Tibetan authorities?

Perhaps the most memorable aspect of Hiong’s story is its beginning. Had the dog not attacked one of the children on the pilgrimage, perhaps the family would have reached the sacred mountain, Khawakarpo, and Télesphore Hiong would have disappeared into the vast anonymity of nineteenth-century Tibetan history. Perhaps he would have become a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Instead, an accident redirected his entire life and three decades later, he was a Catholic priest.

His story deserves to be shared because it belongs to Tibet too. It reveals a Tibetan religious world more contested and internally varied than the idealized version that later captivated many Westerners. Hiong does not fit comfortably into the familiar picture of Tibet, and that is precisely what makes him worth remembering.

Footnotes

[1] Mission Thibet, “P. Télesphore Hiong,” which identifies Hiong as the first Tibetan priest and dates his ordination to 1891. Mission Thibet: P. Télesphore Hiong. See also IRFA: Tibet Mission Report, 1892.

[2] Ibid. The account states that Hiong was born in Derge around 1860 and that after his father was killed and the family’s livestock stolen, his mother was left with six children.

[3] Ibid. The account describes the family’s pilgrimage to Khawakarpo, the dog bite at Yerkalo, their encounter with a Catholic missionary, and their subsequent conversion.

[4] Ibid. The biography describes Hiong’s education at Tatsienlu and Mouping and dates his ordination to 1891.

[5] Ibid. Following ordination, Hiong taught Latin to students who accompanied him between Chapa, Mosimien, and Tatsienlu.

[6] Ibid. The biography records Bishop Giraudeau’s 1906 assignment and Hiong’s subsequent missionary work with Father Charrier in the Taofu region.

[7] Mission Thibet, “Histoire de la chrétienté de Yerkalo.” The account traces the Yerkalo community to Christians displaced from Bonga after its destruction in 1865 and dates the establishment of the Yerkalo mission to approximately 1867. Mission Thibet: Histoire de la chrétienté de Yerkalo.

[8] Ibid. The mission history records repeated expulsions and destruction of mission posts, as well as French diplomatic intervention on behalf of the missionaries.

[9] Ibid. The source states that during the anti-Christian violence of 1905, four Paris Foreign Missions Society priests and eleven Christians from Yerkalo were massacred “by emissaries of the lamas,” while the residence and chapel were burned.

[10] Mission Thibet, “P. Télesphore Hiong.” According to the biography, Hiong was detained, chained, and threatened with death during the revolutionary turmoil before being freed by Chinese troops. Mission Thibet: P. Télesphore Hiong.

[11] Ibid. The biography states that Hiong retired to Mosimien in 1930 and later to Tatsienlu, where he died on February 6, 1945, at age eighty-five.

The Dark Side of Shangri-La: Tibet’s Persecution of Christians

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AI-generated historical illustration.

For much of the Western world, Tibet occupies a peculiar place in the imagination. It is less a country than an idea, a Shangri-La nestled among the clouds, populated by peaceful monks and enlightened masters who preserved an ancient wisdom that the modern world has lost.

The imagery is effective: colorful prayer flags flutter against Himalayan peaks. Monasteries are perched on impossible cliffs while the Dalai Lama writes bestsellers about happiness and the cultivation of inner peace. Tibet has come to represent wisdom, spiritual purity, and light.

There is some truth in that image. Tibetan Buddhism has produced an extraordinary religious and philosophical tradition. Sadly, since the 1950s, Tibetan culture has suffered terribly under Chinese Communist rule. Beijing’s record of repression in Tibet, including restrictions on religious practice and cultural expression, is horrific and should not be minimized.

But acknowledging that history does not require romanticizing the Tibet that existed before Chinese Communist domination. The older Tibet was a deeply hierarchical society, with powerful religious and political institutions, struggles for power, and episodes of violent religious intolerance. One part of that history is particularly uncomfortable for Western admirers of Tibetan spirituality: the treatment of Catholic missionaries and Tibetan Christians.

A recent article by JD Flynn in The Pillar, “Fr. Maurice, the news, and going mufti,” draws attention to this neglected history through the life and death of Blessed Maurice Tornay. Flynn’s account is worth reading because Tornay’s story places the sanitized version of Tibet into a more realistic perspective.

Catholic missionaries attempting to establish themselves in Tibetan regions encountered hostility long before Tornay arrived, both in the 17th century and more recently. The Catholic community at Yerkalo endured repeated destruction: historical accounts from the Tibet mission record that the mission was destroyed in 1887. During the anti-Christian violence of 1905, four missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions Society and eleven Christians from Yerkalo were massacred by emissaries of the lamas, and the residence and chapel were burned. (Mission Thibet)

Among the missionaries killed during the upheaval was Fr. Jean-André Soulié, a French priest who had spent years working in eastern Tibet and was also known for his botanical work. Historical accounts describe him as having been captured, tortured, and shot by lamas during the 1905 revolt. (Wikipedia)

The violence was not confined to 1905. In 1914, Fr. Jean-Théodore Monbeig, another French missionary working in the Tibetan borderlands, was killed by Tibetan rebels near Litang, not long after helping revive the Christian community at Bathang. Mission Thibet records his death as part of the continuing violence faced by Catholic missions in the region. (Mission Thibet)

This history matters because it reveals something easily obscured by the modern mythology surrounding Tibet. Buddhist institutions could aggressively defend territory, wealth, authority, and religious conformity. Monks were not always detached contemplatives standing outside ordinary struggles for power. In some Tibetan regions, monastic authorities participated directly in the expulsion, coercion, and killing of Christians.

Maurice Tornay was born in Switzerland in 1910 and eventually belonged to the Canons Regular of the Great St. Bernard. He traveled to Asia as a young religious and eventually devoted himself to the Tibetan mission. Pope John Paul II would later describe him as a missionary who learned the Tibetan language, grew attached to the country, and regarded it as a second homeland. (Vatican)

That detail is important because Tornay dearly wanted to live among Tibetans. His story cannot be reduced to a cliched narrative of an arrogant European who despised the culture he was attempting to evangelize. But wanting to live among the Tibetans did not mean the religious authorities wanted him there.

Tornay eventually became responsible for the Catholic community at Yerkalo, also known as Yanjing, a remote settlement in Kham, the eastern Tibetan region along the upper Mekong River. Today Yerkalo lies within Mangkang County in the Tibet Autonomous Region, near the borders of present-day Yunnan and Sichuan. Its location made the mission particularly unusual. The borderlands of eastern Tibet had long been contested between Tibetan and Chinese authorities, and Yerkalo itself had experienced periods of Chinese administration. In 1932, however, a local lama from Sogun monastery disarmed the Chinese troops, expelled the Chinese sub-prefect, and took control of the local administration. According to Mission Thibet, the territory subsequently came under Tibetan authority. Yerkalo therefore became the only Catholic missionary post situated in territory then under the Tibetan government in Lhasa. (Mission Thibet)

That distinction is important because the conflict that followed cannot simply be attributed to Chinese authorities. In January 1946, local Buddhist monks invaded the Catholic mission and forcibly expelled Tornay from Yerkalo. Mission records describe the Christians who remained behind as being mistreated and compelled to submit to Lamaist religious rites. (Mission Thibet)

In his Pillar article, Flynn recounts that Tornay’s Catholic parishioners were prevented from gathering for prayer and that some faced coercion to abandon Christianity. Tornay nevertheless continued trying to communicate with and support the Catholics he had been forced to leave behind.

Unable to return to his parish, Tornay eventually decided on an extraordinary course of action. He would go to Lhasa and appeal directly to the Dalai Lama for religious toleration for Tibetan Christians. He disguised himself as a Tibetan and joined a caravan, hoping to reach the Tibetan capital without attracting attention. Unfortunately, he never made it.

On August 11, 1949, Tornay and his Tibetan Catholic companion, Casimir Sandjrou, were killed while traveling toward Lhasa. JD Flynn’s account states that Tibetan Buddhist monks seized Tornay and killed both men before they could reach the capital. Vatican records identify Tornay as a martyr and record his death at To Thong, Tibet, on August 11, 1949. (The Pillar) (Vatican) Pope John Paul II beatified Maurice Tornay on May 16, 1993. (Vatican)

The significance of Tornay’s story extends beyond the fate of just one missionary. Western perceptions of religion have often been shaped by a striking imbalance: Christianity is viewed through the darkest episodes of its institutional history, while Asian religions are frequently presented through an idealized lens. Christianity carries the entire weight of European history, with its crusades, inquisitions, colonialism, corrupt clergy, and institutional abuses. Tibetan Buddhism, by contrast, is often detached from the societies and political institutions in which it developed and presented primarily through meditation, compassion, mystical philosophy, and carefully selected teachings.

That is not a fair historical comparison. Tibetan Buddhist monasteries possessed great political authority and economic power. When another religion entered their territory and attracted converts, the resulting conflict could challenge both religious authority and the existing social order.

The historical persecution of Christians by Tibetan authorities makes Tibet’s Shangri-La myth much harder to sustain. Tibetan history may showcase profound contemplative traditions, but it also contains political struggles, religious coercion, and great cruelty.

Maurice Tornay belongs to that history. So do the Tibetan Christians who continued practicing a religion that powerful people around them wanted extinguished.

Source acknowledgment: This article was inspired by JD Flynn’s “Fr. Maurice, the news, and going mufti,” published in The Pillar on August 11, 2026. Flynn’s account prompted further research into the history of Catholicism in Tibet. Historical details were independently checked where possible against Vatican records and accounts preserved by Mission Thibet. Claims drawn specifically from Flynn’s reporting are attributed to him in the text.

Tantric Deception: Black Magic and Power in Tibetan Buddhism

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I am amazed that the PR for Tibetan Buddhism in the West managed for so long to conceal the extent of black magic practiced by lamas in Tibet historically and even to the present day. This concealment, aided and abetted by the squeamishness and obliviousness of some scholars, has to stop. In the dharma centers I was involved in, anything dark in Tibetan lore was relegated to the Bön religion, and the implication was that once Buddhism took hold in Tibet, any kind of evil acts such as harming or killing sentient beings was completely off the table. The truth is that black magic is in the lexicon of the highest lamas in the lineage as well as ngakpas and others. I believe these techniques are used liberally and current scholarship is finally exposing it.

Solomon G. FitzHerbert’s study of the mid-seventeenth century makes the core point plainly. He argues that tantric ritual and the rhetoric of ritual violence were central to how the Ganden Phodrang state established and legitimated power, not a peripheral curiosity. He writes that Tibetan sources “more than compensate” for the lack of hard military data with abundant materials about the “legitimation and maintenance of authority” through ritual technologies and narratives.¹

Before the rise of the Fifth Dalai Lama, Tibet’s Tsang rulers were already forging political alliances through tantric warfare. FitzHerbert shows that the Tsang kings deliberately patronized lamas famed for their mastery of wrathful and repelling rites. The most favored were the hierarchs of the Karma Kagyu, the “black hat” Karmapa and the “red hat” Zhamarpa, along with the Jonang scholar Taranatha, who was also enjoined to perform repelling rituals on behalf of his patrons.² Their alliances were explicitly religious and martial: an “ecumenical alliance in the name of defending religion and Tibet from foreign armies.”³

Among the Tsang rulers’ most celebrated ritual specialists was the Nyingma master Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen (1552–1624), self-styled “Repeller of Mongols.”⁴ A disciple of Zhikpo Lingpa, Sokdokpa was the main heir to the revealed cycle Twenty-Five Ways of Repelling Armies (Dmag zlog nyi shu rtsa lnga).⁵ His Mongol-repelling rites were widely famed, and he worked directly with the Tsang ruler Phuntsok Namgyel. One elaborate rite performed in 1605 to coincide with a Tsang military offensive involved producing “some 150,000 paper effigies of enemy soldiers.”⁶ These were ritually destroyed to annihilate the opposing force, with Bonpo specialists also enlisted for their expertise in magical harm.⁷

According to FitzHerbert, Phüntsok Namgyel successfully forged a broad anti-Geluk alliance using tantric technologies of protection and destruction.⁸ After his death, “reputedly at the hands of offensive magic being hurled at him by the Shabdrung Nawang Namgyal (Zhabsdrung Ngag dbang rnam rgyal) (1594–1651), founder of the state of Bhutan,”⁹ his son Karma Tenkyong (1604–1642) inherited a weakened position. The Shabdrung’s tantric assault thus became part of the historical memory surrounding Phüntsok Namgyel’s death: a ruler famed for employing ritual power against his enemies was himself believed to have been undone by it. The episode offers a striking example of how tantric warfare could become inseparable from accounts of political conflict in the Himalayan world.

This is where the Fifth Dalai Lama comes into focus. FitzHerbert shows that in the 17th century the Great Fifth cultivated and systematized an official repertoire of destructive and protective rites in service of government aims. In his words, the Dalai Lama showed a “lifelong concern with learning, authoring and instituting an armory of defensive and offensive rituals for the mobilization of unseen forces” for the state.¹⁰ That program contributed to the Ganden Phodrang’s reputation for “magical power,” and helped stage what FitzHerbert calls the grandest “theatre state” in Tibetan Buddhist history.¹¹

FitzHerbert details three overlapping strategies. First, the new government suppressed, marginalized, or co-opted rival traditions of war magic associated with other schools, including Karma Kagyu and strands within Nyingma, while appropriating selective cycles that could be redeployed under Geluk authority.¹² Second, it rebuilt Nyingma institutions such as Dorjé Drak and Mindröling under Ganden Phodrang patronage, folding their esoteric prestige into the state project.¹³ Third, it sponsored new state rituals based on the Dalai Lama’s own visionary experiences, further centralizing ritual power in Lhasa.¹⁴

The rhetoric was not merely devotional. Lamas and ritual specialists acted as “bodyguards” whose professional task was destructive magic on behalf of patrons.¹⁵ Chroniclers attributed battlefield outcomes to the rites of powerful tantrikas. FitzHerbert highlights Chökyi Drakpa, famed for the Yamantaka cycle known as the “Ultra-Repelling Fiery Razor,” which centered on rites of “protecting, repelling and killing.”¹⁶ In one report, after deploying these rites against a Tümed encampment, “nothing was left behind but a name.”¹⁷

To grasp how such violence could be framed as meritorious, FitzHerbert shows the tantric logic that recasts killing as an enlightened “action” when performed by an empowered adept. The adept receives empowerment, performs extensive propitiation to forge identification with the deity, and then “incite[s]” and “dispatch[es]” oath-bound spirits to defend the dharma. By manipulating the five elements and the “public non-reality” of appearances, the practitioner can pacify, increase, control, or destroy, including against human enemies.¹⁸ The moral frame is clear in the sources he cites and translates. Killing is made licit because it is tantric, ritually purified and redirected as enlightened activity.¹⁹

FitzHerbert also situates Tibetan practices within a longer Indo-Buddhist lineage of war magic. He surveys Indian materials that speak of sainyastambha or army-repelling rites, and notes that the Hevajra states that “black magic for paralyzing armies,” is part of its “manifold purpose” and that the Kālacakra includes descriptions of war machines and siege methods such as “catapults, traps, siege towers, and so on,” alongside esoteric harm and protection.²⁰ He further notes the use of human effigies and effigy destruction in offensive rites against enemies, a hallmark of Tibetan ritual repertoires that drew on wider South Asian and even Indo-European precedents.²¹

Western idealization of Tibetan Buddhism has depended on ignoring this record. The lamas who administered and celebrated these rites were not outliers. They were the architects of a political order that fused charisma, ritual terror, and doctrinal justifications into a program of power. State-sponsored ritual violence was normalized in chronicles and hagiographies as enlightened means. The fact pattern is no longer obscure. It is all in the sources, and FitzHerbert has laid them out.

Although FitzHerbert’s focus is on state-sponsored ritual violence, similar technologies of harm have long been used by individual lamas against perceived enemies including, at times, their own disciples. The anthropologist Geoffrey Samuel has noted that the ritual power claimed by tantric masters can be turned inward, weaponizing spiritual authority to punish dissent or enforce obedience.²² In one well-documented episode from the nineteenth century, the treasure-revealer (tertön) Dorje Lingpa was said to have struck down a rival practitioner through wrathful ritual means, his death interpreted locally as a karmic consequence of opposing the lama’s command.²³ Such stories attest to a cultural framework in which ritual, psychic, or physical violence by enlightened masters could be valorized as the just expression of awakened power. I have personally experienced this same form of violent ritual practice at the hands of Tibetan masters.

If Tibetan Buddhism is to be understood honestly outside Tibet, this history needs to be taught in dharma centers and discussed in scholarship without euphemism. The tradition’s own categories allow for destructive ritual and sanctified killing under certain conditions. Pretending otherwise does not protect the innocent devotees who arrive at dharma centers with open hearts seeking methods for developing compassion and loving kindness in service of enlightenment. Indeed, one must ask what kind of enlightenment tradition could allow, even glorify such violence.

Notes

  1. FitzHerbert, Rituals as War Propaganda, 91. FitzHerbert, Solomon G. “Rituals as War Propaganda in the Establishment of the Tibetan Ganden Phodrang State in the Mid-17th Century.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 27 (2018): 49–119: https://www.persee.fr/doc/asie_0766-1177_2018_num_27_1_1508. (I first came across FitzHerbert’s article via a post on Adele Tomlin’s website http://www.dakinitranslations.com.)
  2. Ibid., 95–96.
  3. Ibid., 95.
  4. Ibid., 96.
  5. Ibid., 96.
  6. Ibid., 97.
  7. Ibid., 97.
  8. Ibid., 101.
  9. Ibid., 102–103.
  10. Ibid., 94.
  11. Ibid., 95.
  12. Ibid., 96.
  13. Ibid., 97.
  14. Ibid., 98.
  15. Ibid., 93.
  16. Ibid., 100.
  17. Ibid., 101.
  18. Ibid., 71.
  19. Ibid., 72.
  20. Ibid., 98–99.
  21. Ibid., 99.
  22. Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), pp. 429–432.
  23. Cathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer, “Representations of wrathful deities in treasure literature,” in Tantric Revisionings: New Understandings of Tibetan Buddhism and Indian Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 131–133.

A Brief History of Christianity in Tibet

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Early Traces: The Nestorians and the Eighth Century

The history of Christianity in Tibet stretches back far earlier than most assume. The earliest Christian presence likely came from the Nestorian Church of the East, which had spread along Silk Road routes from Mesopotamia into China by the 7th century. Evidence from the Xi’an Stele of 781 CE shows that Nestorian missionaries were active under the Tang Dynasty, and given Tibet’s close relations with Tang China, it is plausible that Christian communities emerged within the Tibetan cultural sphere during the 8th century.1 However, these early Christian enclaves left no sustained legacy; Tibet’s conversion to Buddhism under Trisong Detsen soon dominated its spiritual landscape.

Jesuits in Guge: Antonio de Andrade and the Lost Kingdom

The next major encounter between Christianity and Tibet came through the Jesuit missions of the 17th century. In 1624, the Portuguese Jesuit Antonio de Andrade became the first known European to enter Tibet. He reached Tsaparang, the capital of the Guge Kingdom in western Tibet, where he was warmly received by King Tri Tashi Dakpa (also called Chadakpo). The king even laid the cornerstone for Tibet’s first church, completed in 1626.2

De Andrade’s arrival, however, sparked tensions. His success in converting local nobles alienated the powerful Buddhist clergy. A political conflict between the king and his brother, who was aligned with Buddhist monastics, led to the downfall of the Guge mission. Around 1630, the king was overthrown with assistance from the Ladakhi ruler Sengge Namgyal, who viewed Guge’s alliance with Catholic missionaries as a provocation.3 The Jesuits were expelled or killed, and Guge itself disappeared from the political map soon thereafter.

The Jesuits in Lhasa: Ippolito Desideri and the Capuchin Controversy

After Guge’s fall, the next great missionary endeavor came with Ippolito Desideri, an Italian Jesuit who reached Lhasa in 1716. Desideri immersed himself in Tibetan culture, mastered the language, and composed treatises comparing Christian and Buddhist metaphysics. His conciliatory approach, attempting dialogue rather than confrontation, won him both local sympathy and later admiration among scholars.4

Desideri’s work, however, was undone not by Tibetans but by Church politics in Rome. The Vatican’s Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide) restructured Asian missions and in 1703 assigned Tibet to the Capuchins, a Franciscan order. The Jesuits were ordered to withdraw, leading to Desideri’s forced departure in 1721. The decision reflected not only internal rivalry but also a Vatican preference for an order more controllable and less inclined toward syncretic engagement.5

Suppression and Exile: The 18th and 19th Centuries

After the Jesuits’ departure, Capuchin missionaries continued their work until the 1740s. A crisis erupted in 1742, when a Tibetan convert refused to bow before the Dalai Lama, an act perceived as defiance against both religion and state. The government expelled the missionaries and banned Christianity in Central Tibet, a policy enforced by 1760.6

Despite this, individual attempts persisted. In the 19th century, the British missionary Annie Royle Taylor undertook a daring journey toward Lhasa in 1892, becoming the first Western woman to reach central Tibet, though she was ultimately turned back by Tibetan guards.7 Her journey epitomized the enduring fascination and futility of Christian outreach in a land long closed to foreigners.

Elsewhere, especially in eastern Tibet (Kham), anti-Christian sentiment often flared into violence. During the 1905 Batang Uprising, missionaries and Tibetan converts were targeted and killed. Among those martyred were André Soulié (1858–1905) and Jean-Théodore Monbeig-Andrieu (1875–1914), who are commemorated in Catholic hagiographies as victims of faith-driven hostility.8

The Vatican’s Strategic Shift: Why the Jesuits Were Replaced

The Vatican’s decision to replace the Jesuits with Capuchins was rooted in both theological and geopolitical concerns. The Chinese Rites Controversy (late 17th–early 18th centuries), in which Jesuits were accused of tolerating Confucian and local religious practices, had eroded papal trust. The Propaganda Fide viewed Jesuit accommodationism, especially Desideri’s open dialogue with Buddhist philosophy, as dangerous relativism. Capuchins, by contrast, were stricter and less likely to blur doctrinal lines. As historian Donald Lach notes, “the Capuchins represented the centralizing impulse of the Counter-Reformation, where obedience outweighed intellectual innovation.”9

Christianity and Modern Tibet: A Restricted Faith

Under Chinese administration since the 1950s, Tibet’s relationship with Christianity has remained tightly controlled. The People’s Republic of China recognizes only state-sanctioned religious institutions, and Catholic practice in the Tibet Autonomous Region exists only under the auspices of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which does not recognize Vatican authority. The Holy See’s cautious diplomacy, especially during Pope Francis’s efforts to reestablish relations with Beijing, has led to a de facto acceptance of limited Catholic presence, primarily among Han Chinese residents in Lhasa rather than ethnic Tibetans.10

The Vatican continues to regard Tibet as part of its mission territory, but evangelization remains almost nonexistent. Tibetan Buddhism remains dominant, and Christian symbols such as crosses, churches, even icons are scarce across the plateau.

Legacy

From the Nestorian wanderers to Jesuit polymaths and Franciscan ascetics, Christianity’s story in Tibet is one of ambition, misunderstanding, and endurance. While never a major presence, its traces linger in forgotten ruins in Tsaparang, in Desideri’s Tibetan manuscripts preserved in Rome, and in the historical memory of dialogue between two of the world’s most mystical spiritual traditions.

Footnotes

  1. Samuel H. Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, Vol. I: Beginnings to 1500 (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1992), 291–295.
  2. Antonio de Andrade, Novo Descobrimento do Gram Cathayo ou dos Reinos de Tibet (Lisbon, 1626); Timo Schmitz, An Overview of Tibetan History (2025), 91–92.
  3. Le Calloc’h, J. (1991). “Antonio de Andrade and the Mission in Western Tibet.” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 60: 57–60.
  4. Ippolito Desideri, Notizie Istoriche del Tibet (Rome, 1727); Hattaway, Paul. Tibet: The Roof of the World (2021), 41.
  5. Peter Clarke, The Jesuits in Asia (Cambridge University Press, 1993), 204–207.
  6. Schmitz, Timo An Overview of Tibetan History, 91–92; Hattaway, 2021: 41–44.
  7. Hattaway, 2021: 68–71.
  8. Servin, Michael. “Christian Martyrs of Tibet.” Journal of Asian Church History 11 (2010): 23–39.
  9. Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. III (University of Chicago Press, 1977), 225–228.
  10. Holy See Press Office, “Relations between the Vatican and China,” L’Osservatore Romano, 2020.

The Shadow Side of Tantra: Magic and Violence Lurk Behind the Mask of Compassion

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A ritual battle scene: Kschetrapala rising from a burning sacrificial torma outside Lhasa, facing the monstrous nine-headed Chinese demon in a clash of spirit armies.

This article contains excerpts from The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism by Victor and Victoria Trimondi

Who were the Trimondis?

Victor and Victoria Trimondi are the pen names of German cultural historians Herbert and Mariana Röttgen. In the 1980s and early 1990s, they were active supporters of the Dalai Lama, translating and publishing his works into German and helping to organize international events in support of Tibet. Initially, they saw Tibetan Buddhism as a beacon of compassion and ethical renewal.

But their perspective changed. Over years of study, they became disillusioned by what they regarded as the darker, concealed aspects of Tibetan tantric Buddhism: ritual magic, sexual practices, secrecy, and the fusion of religion with political power. Their critical work The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism (2003) full text here seeks to expose these elements, drawing heavily on Tibetan source texts and the earlier ethnographic research of figures like René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz (Oracles and Demons of Tibet, 1956) and Matthias Hermanns.

Because of this trajectory, from enthusiastic supporters of Tibetan Buddhism to outspoken critics, the Trimondis occupy a controversial position. Admirers of Tibetan Buddhism accuse them of exaggeration and hostility, but their book nonetheless catalogs texts, rituals, and historical examples that complicate the popular image of Tibetan Buddhism as peaceful and compassionate.

Excerpts from The Shadow of the Dalai Lama

Part II, Chapter 8: Magic as a Political Instrument

The following excerpts illustrate how the Trimondis argue that ritual magic was systematically integrated into Tibetan politics and warfare:

Invocation of demons
Since time immemorial ritual magic and politics have been one in Tibet. A large proportion of these magic practices are devoted to the annihilation of enemies, and especially to the neutralizing of political opponents. The help of demons was necessary for such ends. And they could be found everywhere — the Land of Snows all but overflowed with terror gods, fateful spirits, vampires, ghouls, vengeful goddesses, devils, messengers of death and similar entities, who, in the words of Matthias Hermanns, “completely overgrow the mild and goodly elements [of Buddhism] and hardly let them reveal their advantages” (Hermanns, 1965, p. 401).

For this reason, invocations of demons were not at all rare occurrences nor were they restricted to the spheres of personal and family life. They were in general among the most preferred functions of the lamas. Hence, “demonology” was a high science taught at the monastic universities, and ritual dealings with malevolent spirits were — as we shall see in a moment — an important function of the lamaist state.

The war demon Kschetrapala
Once the gods had accepted the sacrifice they stood at the ritual master’s disposal. The four-armed protective deity, Mahakala, was considered a particularly active assistant when it came to the destruction of enemies. In national matters his bloodthirsty emanation, the six-handed Kschetrapala, was called upon. The magician in charge wrote the war god’s mantra on a piece of paper in gold ink or blood from the blade of a sword together with the wishes he hoped to have granted, and began the invocation.

Towards the end of the forties the Gelugpa lamas sent Kschetrapala into battle against the Chinese. He was cast into a roughly three-yard high sacrificial cake (or torma). This was then set alight outside Lhasa, and whilst the priests lowered their victory banner the demon freed himself and flew in the direction of the threatened border with his army. A real battle of the spirits took place here, as a “nine-headed Chinese demon”, who was assumed to have assisted the Communists in all matters concerning Tibet, appeared on the battlefield. Both spirit princes (the Tibetan and the Chinese) have been mortal enemies for centuries. Obviously the nine-headed emerged from this final battle of the demons as the victor.

“Voodoo magic” in Tibetan Buddhism
The practice widely known from the Haitian voodoo religion of making a likeness of an enemy or a doll and torturing or destroying this in their place is also widespread in Tibetan Buddhism. Usually, some substance belonging to the opponent, be it a hair or a swatch from their clothing, has to be incorporated into the substitute. It is, however, sufficient to note their name on a piece of paper…

Such “voodoo practices” were no rare and unhealthy products of the Nyingmapa sect or the despised pre-Buddhist Bonpos. Under the Fifth Dalai Lama they became part of the elevated politics of state. The “Great Fifth” had a terrible “recipe book” (the Golden Manuscript) recorded on black thangkas which was exclusively concerned with magical techniques for destroying an enemy.

Why all this matters

These passages highlight a side of Tibetan Buddhism that is largely hidden from public view: the integration of destructive magic and spirit warfare into the machinery of the lamaist state. Nebesky-Wojkowitz’s research on ritual manuals, Hermanns’ cultural observations, and the Trimondis’ synthesis all converge on the same conclusion: alongside compassion and wisdom, Tibetan Buddhism preserved and continues to use technologies of coercion and violence.

For modern practitioners and students in the West, this raises unavoidable questions:

  • Are newcomers told that tantric ritual includes not only deities of compassion but also demon invocations and rites of subjugation? What risks do these violent magical technologies pose for the unsuspecting student?
  • What does “consent” mean if disciples are invited to take refuge in Tibetan Buddhism and receive empowerments without knowledge of these dimensions?
  • How much of this is framed as symbolic or metaphorical today, and is that distinction clearly explained? Evidence suggests that such practices continue much as they did in the past, which makes a thorough and honest examination all the more urgent.

Conclusion

The Trimondis’ work is controversial, but it is also important because it insists on remembering what is usually forgotten or denied. If the compassionate face of Tibetan Buddhism is to be embraced honestly, then its shadow side, the reality of political magic, demon invocations, and coercive ritual, must also be acknowledged. Only then can students and practitioners engage with full awareness, rather than be fooled by the illusion of partial truths.

References and Further Reading

  • Victor & Victoria Trimondi, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism (2003).
  • René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet (1956).
  • Matthias Hermanns, The Indo-Tibetan Religion of the Great Goddess of the Land (1965).
  • Melvyn C. Goldstein & A. Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet (1996).
  • Samten Karmay, The Secret Visions of the Fifth Dalai Lama (1988).

Truth Behind the Myth: Violence in Tibetan Buddhism

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In his article Orientalism and Aspects of Violence in the Tibetan Tradition, Elliot Sperling uses the term Orientalism in the sense made famous by Edward Said. It describes how Western scholars, writers, and media have often portrayed Asian and Middle Eastern societies in ways that are exotic, stereotypical, and distorted (Sperling 2001, p. 317). [1]

In this context, Elliot Sperling is pointing out that Tibet, especially Tibetan Buddhism, has been framed in the West not as a complex, politically active society but as a mystical and pacifist Shangri-la (Sperling 2001, p. 318). That romanticized portrayal fits the Orientalist mold because it projects Western fantasies and agendas onto a culture instead of showing it in its full, often messy, historical reality.

Here, Orientalism is not just about misunderstanding or stereotyping. It is about how those misconceptions feed into selective histories, in this case downplaying or erasing the tradition’s capacity for political maneuvering, power struggles, and violence.

It is important to cut through the sugar-coated narratives about Tibetan Buddhism as an always peaceful, otherworldly faith. Historian Elliot Sperling, a top authority on Tibet and China history, attempts to do this in his essay. He shreds the romanticized “compassionate lama” image and reintroduces the messy, political, and yes, violent realities of Tibetan history (Sperling 2001, p. 320).

  • Tibetan Buddhism was not pacifism incarnate. Sperling points out that the Fifth Dalai Lama did not shy away from military force when Gelugpa interests were on the line in the 17th century. In the early 20th century, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama actively sanctioned armed resistance against Qing forces in Lhasa (Sperling 2001, pp. 323–324).
  • Modern Western portrayals have softened the truth. The prevailing global image of Tibetan Buddhism, as inherently gentle, infallibly peaceful, and untouched by politics, is largely a product of Western assimilation and the Tibetan exile community’s framing of their own image (Sperling 2001, pp. 317–318).

Why It Matters

If you are buying into the “peace only” ideal, Sperling’s essay demands reconsideration. He forces you to recognize Tibetan Buddhism as a tradition entwined in power and violence when necessary (Sperling 2001, p. 317). The strident idealism selling Tibet as a spiritual Shangri-la does not hold up under scrutiny. In 1660, the Fifth Dalai Lama faced a rebellion in Tsang. Declaring he acted for the good of the people in the region, he issued uncompromising orders for the complete destruction of his enemies, men, women, children, servants, and property, leaving no trace of them. This directive, written in his own hand, reveals a leader willing to use extreme military force to secure his government’s power, a stark contrast to the modern image of the Dalai Lama as an unshakable symbol of peace.

[Of those in] the band of enemies who have despoiled the duties entrusted to them:
Make the male lines like trees that have had their roots cut;
Make the female lines like brooks that have dried up in winter;
Make the children and grandchildren like eggs smashed against rocks;
Make the servants and followers like heaps of grass consumed by fire;
Make their dominion like a lamp whose oil has been exhausted;
In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names (Sperling 2001, p. 325).

This brutal passage, is a powerful and chilling indictment. It underscores the darker potential within any ideology. When power, anger, or fear take hold, even so-called peaceful spiritual traditions can sanction annihilation. Sperling’s work reminds us to stop buying into the marketing of Tibetan Buddhism as a compassionate, peaceful idyll. His historical analysis and the many examples of tantric annihilation rituals used against human targets says otherwise. It is time to drop the myth and acknowledge the tradition for what it truly is: a living, political, and sometimes violent force (Sperling 2001, p. 329).

  1. Elliot Sperling, “Orientalism and Aspects of Violence in the Tibetan Tradition” (2001), info-buddhism.com, originally published in Imagining Tibet: Perceptions, Projections, & Fantasies, ed. Thierry Dodin and Heinz Räther, Wisdom Publications. Available at: https://info-buddhism.com/Orientalism_Violence_Tibetan_Buddhism_Elliot_Sperling.html