28 Up to this point We have written of the selecting and recruiting of those who are to share with you your labors. There still remains for Us in this context to commend to your zeal a plan which, if it should be put into operation, We believe would greatly help in the wider diffusion of the Faith. In what high esteem We hold the contemplative life is made abundantly clear in the Apostolic Constitution of two years ago, whereby We most gladly confirmed by Our Apostolic authority the rule of the Carthusians which had been revised to conform with the new Code of Canon Law, a rule which had been approved by Pontifical authority from the time of the origin of the Carthusian Order. Now, as We exhort from Our heart the Major Superiors of similar contemplative orders, so you too in like manner give them repeated evidences of the fact that they, by founding such houses in the mission field, can spread and promote the more austere types of contemplative life. These contemplatives, too, will obtain from heaven for you and for the work to which you are devoted an abundance of graces. Nor is there any danger that such monks will not find conditions for their mode of life satisfactory. The inhabitants, particularly in certain places, although pagan in large majority have a natural inclination towards solitude, prayer, and contemplation. In this special connection may We call to your notice that great monastery which the Reformed Cistercians of La Trappe founded in the Vicariate Apostolic of Peking. In this monastery there are nearly one hundred monks, the major portion of whom are Chinese. As they, by the exercise of the most perfect virtue, by constant prayer, by the austerity of their lives, by manual labor placate the Divine Majesty and bring down the mercies of God both upon themselves and their pagan neighbors, so also by the force of their example they win these very pagans to Jesus Christ. It is, therefore, not to be questioned that these hermits, while they guard intact the spirit of their holy Founder and therefore do not engage in an active life, nevertheless they prove themselves of great assistance in the successful work of the missions. If, perchance, the Superiors of any of these Orders should heed your requests and establish houses for their subjects in places judged best by common agreement between you, they shall do something which will be, in the first place, very beneficial to the great multitudes of pagans and which will be, secondly, more pleasing to Us personally than any words can express.
Source: Rerum Ecclesiae (Vatican.va)