and many others who chose jail, labor camps, and even death for the sake of their faith and their loyalty to the pope would sustain countless people in the years ahead." By late 1957, due to the prior expulsion of foreign clergy and the subsequent imprisonment of Chinese clergy, 120 out of 145 dioceses and prefectures apostolic were without ordinaries. The Diocese of Qingdao went without an ordinary until the state-run Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association consecrated and appointed Bishop Paul Han Xirang, OFM without papal sanction in 1988. The cathedral was badly damaged during the Cultural Revolution which lasted from 1966 to 1971. During this time St. Michael's Cathedral was defaced by the Red Guards. The crosses topping the twin steeples were removed by the Red Guards, with two men falling to their deaths during the removal. An account of the cathedral's defacement is translated as follows: The original crosses were rescued by local Catholics and buried in the hills. The 2400-pipe organ destroyed by the Red Guards had been one of the two largest in Asia. Restoration The Chinese government subsequently repudiated the Cultural Revolution. A major document presented at the September 1979 Fourth Plenum of the Eleventh National Party Congress Central Committee, gave a "preliminary assessment" of the entire 30-year period of Communist rule. At the plenum, party Vice Chairman Ye Jianying declared the Cultural Revolution "an appalling catastrophe" and "the most severe setback to [the] socialist cause since [1949]." The Chinese government's condemnation of the Cultural Revolution culminated in the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China, adopted by the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. This stated that "Comrade Mao Zedong was a great Marxist and a great proletarian revolutionary, strategist and theorist. It is true that he made gross mistakes during the "cultural revolution", but, if we judge his activities as a whole, his contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweigh his mistakes. His merits are primary and his errors secondary." The change in prevailing political views was favourable to St. Michael's Cathedral; the Chinese government funded the cathedral's restoration efforts. New crosses were manufactured for the cathedral's restoration, and "after several years of repair, [the cathedral] was re-opened in April 1981" for religious worship. In May 1999 the church was opened to the general