Wang was born in the city of Zhumadian in the central Chinese province of Henan on Feb. 27, 1966. He studied at the South Central Seminary between 1987 and 1993 and was ordained a priest on Oct. 17, 1993.
From December 2011 he was a parish priest in the Huiji District, in Zhengzhou, as well as chairman of the Henan Catholic Patriotic Association and deputy director of the Academic Affairs Committee. In January 2013, he was elected as the rector of the Diocese of Zhengzhou.
The appointment of the 58-year-old Wang marks a change since the Diocese of Zhengzhou has been without a bishop since the 1950s.
The Diocese of Zhengzhou was erected on April 11, 1946, in accordance with Pope Pius XII’s apostolic constitution Quotidie Nos, which established an official hierarchy for the Chinese Church.
In the same year, the Italian-born Xaverian missionary, Faustino Tissot, was appointed bishop of Zhengzhou. Following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) implemented a campaign to isolate the local Church from Rome by expelling foreign priests, missionaries, and bishops.
In 1953, Tissot and 16 other foreign priests were expelled, leaving the diocese functionally vacant. The running of the diocese was continued by six Chinese priests, which continued until Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution when all religious activity and celebration was suspended and churches were forced to close.