China’s Catholic community expressed shock and acceptance when Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation last month. When the papal conclave announced the ascension of Pope Francis I yesterday, Beijing was quick to issue words of warning to the new pontiff. The New York Times reports:

China congratulated Pope Francis on Thursday on his ascension to the papacy, but also warned the Vatican not to interfere in what China deems to be its internal affairs.

[...]Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said that Beijing hoped the pope, who was elected on Wednesday, would work with Chinese officials on improving relations. But, she said, the Vatican “must stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, including in the name of religion.”

She also said the Vatican must sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan before ties with Beijing improve. China considers Taiwan a renegade province that is part of its territory.

A report from Reuters further quotes spokeswoman Hua Chunying on Beijing’s hope that the Vatican will cut ties with Taiwan in order to foster better relations with China, and also outlines the tensions between Beijing and the Vatican:

China’s constitution enshrines freedom of religion, but stability-obsessed leaders in the officially atheist government are wary of the appeal of a higher moral power.

The Vatican has previously condemned what it called “external pressures and constrictions” on Chinese Catholics, and the government has detained Vatican-appointed bishops who split from the Catholic Patriotic Association.

Chinese Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin, ordained by the Vatican, has been held under house arrest at the Sheshan seminary in Shanghai since July after he announced that he was leaving the association.

The Vatican had refused to recognize China’s ordination to the state-run Church of Reverend Joseph Yue Fusheng, complaining he had not been blessed by the pope.

Catholic activists say other bishops have gone missing or have to contend with house arrest and surveillance.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Catholic Church, Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, pope, Pope Francis I, religion, Vatican, Vatican relations
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One priest’s reaction was accepting — even approving.

“I’m open-minded. You can retire as Pope,” said Father Yan, in a telephone interview from a Chinese province. (He can only be identified by his last name since speaking out about Roman Catholicism is politically sensitive in China.)

“When God makes us old, he doesn’t want us to work,” Father Yan said.

“People haven’t really talked about it here. It’s a sensitive issue because of relations, but it won’t impact on relations. The state church will accept it. You change a Pope and things go on for the state church,” he said. “But I think it’s very good to retire. It’s O.K. He’s old.”

Read more about Catholicism and China’s relations with the Vatican, via CDT.

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Post tags: Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, Vatican relations
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Ma did not return for Mass on Sunday and was being confined at Shanghai’s Sheshan seminary without contact with others, according to Lam and the websites AsiaNews and UCAnews. They said the move most likely was ordered by local officials assigned to supervise religious life.

“Local officials overreacted and now they’ve created a crisis for Beijing and for Shanghai,” Lam said in a telephone interview.

In his announcement in front of hundreds of worshippers, Ma, 44, said he was stepping down from the Catholic Patriotic Association, the ruling Communist Party-controlled body that oversees the Chinese church, to focus on ministry. The Vatican does not recognize the Catholic Patriotic Association, and the body’s existence is a major form of friction between Beijing and the Holy See, who have no formal relations.

Calls to the Shanghai diocese rang unanswered Tuesday and the CPA did not immediately respond to faxed questions.

Hong Kong media first reported Bishop Ma’s disappearance on Saturday evening, according to Vatican Insider, and Catholic news service ucanews.com claimed that the Shanghai diocese received a text message from him yesterday saying he “needed a break” and had “made a personal retreat”. Today, an official from the CPCA told The South China Morning Post that he had received no news of Ma’s whereabouts.

Ma wasn’t the only bishop ordained over the weekend, but he was the only one endorsed by the Vatican – AFP reports that China’s state-run Catholic church defiantly ordained Father Yue Fusheng on Friday as well:

The Holy See had warned this week it deemed the consecration illegitimate and vowed to excommunicate priests who participated.

But the government’s State Administration for Religious Affairs hit back in a statement on its website on Friday.

“The attitude was extremely rude and unreasonable,” it said. “We urge the Vatican to revoke its so-called excommunication threats and return to the proper position of dialogue.

“Continuing its practice of choosing and ordaining bishops is urgently needed for the Catholic Church in China to carry out its work of pastoral care, evangelisation and church management.”

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, Shanghai, Thaddeus Ma Daqin, vacation-style treatment, Vatican, Vatican relations
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Pope Benedict XVI learned of the ordination of Rev. Joseph Guo Jincai “with deep regret” as it constituted a “grave violation” of church law and hampered reconciliation efforts that have been a priority for the papacy, the Vatican press office said.

The Vatican also accused Chinese authorities of committing “grave violations of freedom of religion and conscience” by forcing Vatican-approved bishops to attend the ceremony.

Guo was ordained a bishop Saturday in Chengde, the first time in five years that China had carried out an ordination without Rome’s consent. News reports have said Chinese authorities forced at least three Vatican-approved bishops to attend, sequestering them for several days beforehand.

Communist China forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951, and worship is allowed only in state-backed churches, although millions of Chinese belong to unofficial congregations loyal to Rome.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bishops, Catholic Church, religious freedom, Vatican, Vatican relations
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[Southern Weekend]: This year is the 400th anniversary of the death of Matteo Ricci. China, Europe and the United States have held memorials and exhibits. Matteo Ripa who came over 100 years later is also highly regarded by Chinese, even though he did not agree with Ricci on things like rites such as veneration of Confucius and ancestor worship. What common substance do these two offer to modern people in terms of cultural dialogue between China and the West?

Sepe: Ricci and Ripa have one thing in common. They both came from Italy to China and became one with the people of China. They did not want to change Chinese people’s habits into Western ones. They adapted to the local environment, hoping to be like the Chinese.

Ricci brought culture, science and experience from the West as an offering to China. A century later Ripa’s method of evangelization was different in that after living in China for 13 he returned to Italy. In 1723 he brought a group of Chinese back to Naples to live there.

They seem the same on the surface and Chinese respect Ripa just as they do Ricci. He and his group of Chinese caused eastern and western cultures to meet. They founded Eastern University which is a national university today. But everyone knows the founders were Ripa and a group of Chinese. Eastern University today teaches Chinese, and eastern culture and philosophy. If you visit you can see a painting of Ripa and his Chinese colleagues wearing Chinese clothes and it has their names in Chinese. This painting is valuable both for artistic and historical reasons. They were the first Chinese to come to Naples.

See also “The Vatican, Immigrants, and Urbanization: ‘China and the Holy See Will Find a Way to Solve it Together,’” also translated by Hathaway.

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Post tags: Catholic Church, religion, Vatican relations
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The Pope has told Chinese Catholics of the officially tolerated Patriotic Church and those who worship secretly take steps towards reconciliation.

Beijing broke off formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1951, and Catholic worship is only permitted in officially recognised churches.

But members of the underground church have kept their allegiance to Rome.

It is estimated that, altogether, there are more than 10m Catholics throughout China.

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Post tags: Pope Benedict XVI, religious freedom, Vatican relations
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The normalization of ties between the Holy See, head of the largest unified religion of the world, and China, the most populous country on Earth, registered progresses in recent years and months. However, the distance between the parties remains significant. The Holy See is extremely concerned about the situation and the division of the Catholic Church in China vis a vis the government. Meanwhile, Beijing is still very cautious about how it should handle the strange phenomenon of a universal religion with an independent “political statehood”. Trust, mutual fear is an issue, cultural perceptions is another. Still Beijing is clear that mormalization of ties with the Vatican could imporve immensely its perception in the world.
Rome’s tortured state of mind

In Rome, many people are very worried and concerned about the underground Church. They think these people can be both fickle and difficult. They are fickle because, with the years in isolation, they lost touch with the proper Catholic education, and they missed the long process of Vatican Council II, which started in the 1960s. Conversely, some underground Chinese Catholics started following a mishmash of strange religious creeds. Furthermore, Beijing tried to avoid dealing with them, fearing accusations of suppression of religion; Rome could not reach out to them because they claimed to be under Communist suppression; and therefore, some of them would not listen to Rome or Beijing. Some of them de facto made up a group of their own, bringing embarrassment to Rome. They claim to be Catholics but are not totally in line with Rome’s tenets, and they are hindering the Holy See’s normalization of ties with Beijing, which is a primary objective for the Pope.

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Post tags: Catholic Church, Vatican, Vatican relations
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Zhao Xiao, a former Communist Party official and convert to Christianity, smiles over a cup of tea and says he thinks there are up to 130m Christians in China. This is far larger than previous estimates. The government says there are 21m (16m Protestants, 5m Catholics). Unofficial figures, such as one given by the Centre for the Study of Global Christianity in Massachusetts, put the number at about 70m. But Mr Zhao is not alone in his reckoning. A study of China by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, an American think-tank, says indirect survey evidence suggests many unaffiliated Christians are not in the official figures. And according to China Aid Association (CAA), a Texas-based lobby group, the director of the government body which supervises all religions in China said privately that the figure was indeed as much as 130m in early 2008.

If so, it would mean China contains more Christians than Communists (party membership is 74m) and there may be more active Christians in China than in any other country. In 1949, when the Communists took power, less than 1% of the population had been baptised, most of them Catholics. Now the largest, fastest-growing number of Christians belong to Protestant “house churches”.

Formally, the Communist Party forbids members to hold a religious belief, and the churches say they suffer official harassment. The president of the Beijing house-church alliance, Zhang Mingxuan,was thrown out of the capital before the Olympic games and told he was unwelcome when he returned. In early June, the state government of Henan arrested half a dozen house-church members on charges of illegally sending charitable donations to Sichuan earthquake victims. CAA claims harassment of house churches is rising.

This story comes in conjunction with the first Chinese tour group to Israel where New Testament sites are attracting Chinese tourists. Alison Klaymon reports from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency via the Jewish Exponent, “Destination Israel: China Launches First Official Tours.”

See the photos posted by People’s Daily where the official story presents no religious component.

At the same time, Beijing has denied bishops a trip to the Vatican, see Times of India “China Denies Bishops trip to Rome: Vatican”:

China’s 8 to 12 million Catholics are split between the officially approved church and an “underground” one loyal to the Pope. The lack of participation by the mainland bishops came as a surprise because there had been signs of an improvement in relations this year. A bishop from Hong Kong represented Pope Benedict at the opening ceremony of the Olympics in August and in May China’s national orchestra played for the Pope at an unprecedented concert in the Vatican.

Benedict has made improving relations with China a main goal of his pontificate and hopes diplomatic ties can be restored. China says before restoring ties, broken off two years after the 1949 Communist takeover, the Vatican must sever relations with Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province. The synod, at which the bishops will be discussing scripture, will see a first when Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen becomes the first Jew to address such a Vatican gathering. The rabbi of Haifa, Israel, will lead a one-day discussion of Jewish interpretation of the Scriptures on Oct. 6.

See also related recent ban on religious music.

© jleung for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Christianity, house church, Vatican relations
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Events in Tibet cast a shadow on Friday over the Vatican’s Easter observances, which have Chinese overtones this year to reflect Pope Benedict XVI’s advocacy of greater freedom for China’s tiny Catholic minority.

According to an advance text released by the Vatican, [Hong Kong Cardinal] Zen’s text will refer to “living martyrs of the 21st century,” a theme that is unusually political compared to other years.

In one of the meditations to be read out at the event, Zen wrote that Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Jerusalem who approved the death sentence for Jesus, was the “symbol of all those who use authority as an instrument of power and don’t concern themselves with justice.”

Read more about China’s relationship with the Vatican, via CDT.

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Liu Bainian, the de facto head of Beijing’s official Patriotic Church, has said on several occasions that he would like to welcome the Pope to China once an agreement has been reached.

While the Vatican says it has received no formal invitation, observers say Liu’s words would have been uttered only with approval from the highest levels.

The announcement of mutual recognition and a papal visit would be a propaganda coup for China. It would counter the negative publicity that has stunned Beijing recently, culminating in the decision by Steven Spielberg, the film director, to end his involvement with the Olympics over China’s policies in Sudan.

Read more about China’s relationship with the Vatican, via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, Vatican relations
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The Vatican began two days of meetings on Friday over the church’s relations with China, which have soured because of a dispute over the right to appoint bishops.

The meetings were called to discuss “problems between the Holy See and China,” the Vatican’s top spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Thursday.

Father Cervellera said progress could be made only if the Chinese government clamped down on the Patriotic Association, something that he speculated could happen as the 2008 Olympics in Beijing approach. [Full Text]

- Also Vatican Wants China Ties But Will Stick by Taiwan by Reuters

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Catholic Church, Vatican, Vatican relations
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