The event at Macau Ricci Institute is a tribute to the memory of a very good man and scholar and to his outstanding academic legacy.

I first met Paul Rule in 1994 in Brescia (Italy), during a ground breaking symposium on Giulio Aleni, the first Jesuit missionary to China to be involved in the Chinese Rites Controversy. I remember Rule’s fervent argumentation in favor of Aleni’s stance in the fateful controversy. Since then, I cannot really count how many times we met in numerous symposiums on China mission, held in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Europe. For my own dissertation of Aleni, Rule’s K’ung-Tzu or Confucius (1986) was a preliminary must. Rule published dozens of other well-researched studies on China Mission in Late Ming and Early Qing.

Australian born and educated Paul Rule taught Chinese Religions and History at La Trobe University in Melbourne until 2002, but continued to collaborate with many international academic Institutions, particularly with the Ricci Institutes of San Francisco and Macau. He received education in the Society of Jesus, and was a Jesuit priest from 1955 to 1964.

The contribution of Paul Rule to scholarship on Jesuit China Mission is monumental and essential for any one working in the field. The last and most impressive legacy of Rule is exactly on the Rites Controversy: together with Claudia Von Collani, he produced the English translation, commentary and annotation of the Acta Pekinensia. They are the records of the legation of Maillard de Tournon to China in 1705-1710 compiled in Latin by Jesuit Kilian Stumpf. The impressive work with its huge amount of previously unedited information, counts three volumes, published in 2015, 2019 and 2024, for a total of about 2500 pages. Indeed, Paul Rule worked until his last day.