For a time, some bishops who refused to accept CPCA control consecrated other bishops, so that there were cases of two parallel hierarchies among Catholics in China, the one in schism partly, the other in full communion with Pope Pius XII and his successors. The first to take this action was the Bishop of Baoding, Joseph Fan Xueyan, who in 1981 consecrated three bishops without any mandate from the Holy See, which, however, gave approval for his action at the end of the same year. This led to at least the perception, perhaps even the reality, of two parallel Roman Catholic Churches in China, often referred to as the "official" Church and the "underground" one.