The Hong Kong Catholic Cathedral of The Immaculate Conception

During the Second World War, the cathedral suffered damage on its anniversary in 1941, when a Japanese shell was dropped onto it during the Battle of Hong Kong.[7] However, it survived the war relatively unscathed due to a decree made a century before. When the mission in Hong Kong was first established in 1841, Pope Pius IX ruled that, although the colony was under British rule, the Prefecture Apostolic should remain under the administration of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), a missionary society from Italy. As a result, the Japanese treated the cathedral as being under the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Italy, with whom they were not at war.[4] Because of this, the cathedral was spared from being ransacked and plundered by the occupying forces[11] and its archives were preserved better than other churches throughout Hong Kong,[4] having been left "relatively unscathed."[11]