China has a history of meeting fire with fire. Nowadays, as the internal political struggle intensifies in the lead up to the election of the country’s new leadership in 2012, China does not hesitate to retaliate whenever anyone dares to oppose its will.
Since early June, it has repeatedly hit back against the Holy See for rejecting a number of candidates that the Beijing authorities had wanted to make bishops and, in particular, for excommunicating two Chinese bishops whose ordination they had forced through, without papal approval, in June and July,
Vatican Insider has learned that Beijing has drawn up a blacklist of around 20 names, most of them priests, that it considers to be linked to the Holy See in one way or other, and whom it does not want to allow into the country in reprisal for the Holy See’s actions.
Since June, it has blocked 9 Catholic priests from entering the mainland, even though they all had valid visas. Four of the priests are Italian, four are of Chinese origin, and one is French. Most are living in Hong Kong.
Seven were blocked at border control points on the mainland, and had their entry visas cancelled without explanation. Two were stopped at Beijing’s international airport, had their visas cancelled and were put on the next flight back to where they had come from.
News of these latest retaliations circulated in diplomatic and Church circles over the summer months. Several of the priests have opted for anonymity, or chosen not to speak publicly about their experiences lest they prejudice their future chances of returning to China, or further aggravate the situation. The Holy See too has not commented on this.
The first to break the news was Father Franco Mella, 62, an Italian missionary who resides in Hong Kong and has been a regular visitor to China over the past 20 years. A well known social activist and fearless defender of the right of abode of children of migrant workers born in the mainland to reside with their families in Hong Kong, he was blocked from entering the mainland at Shenzen in the southern province of Guangdong, at the end of July.
Some time earlier he had participated in a protest in Hong Kong against the illegitimate ordinations of bishops in the mainland. He denounced the violation of his rights in the media, and has been advised not to return for a visa for at least two years.
Likewise, the French priest, Bruno Lepeu, Superior of the Paris Foreign Missions in Hong Kong, where he has lived and worked for the past 17 years, was prevented from entering the mainland in this same period. He reported that his entry visa has been cancelled in a recent publication of his institute.
Four priests of Chinese origin were also refused entry to the mainland, including Peter Choy Wai-Man, Professor at the Centre for Catholic Studies of the Chinese University in Hong Kong. Their visas were cancelled at the frontier, without any explanation.
The case of the Italian priest, Gianni Criveller, is somewhat different. A recognized international scholar on the history of Christianity in China, he was granted a visa to work as an academic in Beijing, and was engaged in a major research program at one of the city’s prestigious universities. Returning from a visit to Hong Kong, late July, he was blocked at Beijing’s international airport, held there overnight, and made take the first flight back to Hong Kong next morning, again without an explanation.
Respect for the elderly has long been part of the traditional Chinese culture dating back at least to the time of Confucius (557-479 BC), but sadly this noble tradition too was sidelined as Beijing struck back at the Vatican.
In mid-September, the Chinese authorities blocked the 86-year old Italian missionary priest, Angelo S. Lazzarotto, from entering the country. He had travelled from Milan to the Chinese capital with a large group of pilgrims but was refused entry at Beijing’s international airport even though he had been granted a visa two weeks earlier. He was obliged to take the next flight back home, three hours later. An unpleasant ordeal for a man of his age! Fr. Lazzarotto is a distinguished China scholar with many friends in the mainland. He has visited China every year since 1978. This was the first time he was refused entry.
In another incident, not directly linked to that of the nine priests mentioned above but nonetheless highly significant, Beijing refused to grant an entry visa to the 87-year old Cardinal Paul Shan Kuo-hsi who was born in the mainland but lives in Taiwan. Since 2006 this revered cardinal has been struggling heroically against lung-cancer and wished to visit his birthplace in Puyang, north-eastern Henan, one last time before his death; he has not been there since 1975.
In September 2010, the Director of China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs, Wang Zuo’an, visited the cardinal in Taiwan and invited him to visit the mainland. The invitation was re-issued in January 2011 by Liu Yuanlong, vice-Chairperson and Secretary General, of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA).
Soon after, because of his extraordinary struggle against cancer, the cardinal was invited to address audiences at Shanghai and Xiamen universities on how to combat cancer. He was scheduled also to celebrate mass with his former classmate, the legendary bishop of Shanghai, Jin Luxian. The Chinese authorities wanted him to visit Beijing too, where he would have been expected to meet the CCPA leadership. The cardinal, for his part, wishing to avoid any manipulation of his visit for political ends, decided not to go to Beijing and, subsequently, was not given the entry visa.
These repressive acts are but the latest chapter in the increasingly tense relationship between China and the Holy See over most of the past year. Before then, from the end of 2006 to October 2010, relations between the two sides had, for the most part, progressed positively; each adopted a pragmatic approach and agreed on almost a dozen candidates to be bishops. But, significantly, they were unable to reach a mutually acceptable accord on the crucial question of the nomination of bishops.
Relations began to deteriorate, however, when Beijing, dismissing the Holy See’s objections, pushed through the ordination of Father Guo Jincai as bishop of Chengde without the pope’s approval on November 20. The Vatican reacted strongly.
The situation soon got worse when the Chinese authorities, again ignoring the Holy See’s objections, held the Eight National Assembly of Catholic Representatives in Beijing, 8-9 December 2010, to elect the new leadership of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the Bishops Conference of the Catholic Church in China; both entities not recognized by the Holy See. The new leadership stated clearly that China would continue to elect and ordain bishops, with or without the Pope’s approval.
From May 2011 onwards, Beijing attempted to force through the ordination of a number of candidates as bishops, several of them without the Pope’s approval. It succeeded in having Fr. Lei Shiyin ordained as Bishop of Leshan, June 29, and Fr. Huang Bingzhang ordained as Bishop of Shantou, July 14.
Then, for the first time since 1958 when Beijing began ordaining bishops without the papal mandate, the Holy See publicly declared that these last two illegitimately ordained bishops had incurred excommunication. On July 25, Beijing firmly denounced this grave sanction as “extremely unreasonable and rude “, and demanded that it be revoked.
While the Holy See claimed it was exercising its spiritual authority within the strictly religious – not political - sphere by nominating bishops and declaring that the illicitly ordained ones had incurred excommunication, the Beijing authorities saw it very differently through their political lens, viewing it as foreign interference in China’s internal affairs.
All this happened at a time of a general hardening of positions on many fronts within China as the power struggle intensified in the lead up to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, scheduled for late 2012, which will elect the country’s new leadership. In this context, Beijing appears to have taken the political decision to hit back at the Holy See by forbidding entry to the mainland of priests that it considers as having close ties to the Vatican.
While the jury is out on that question, one thing has become abundantly clear: a great many people, inside and outside China, are hoping that the fires can be extinguished sooner rather than later, and that the Holy See and China can finally negotiate a mutually acceptable agreement to the key question of the nomination of bishops which has been at the epicenter of the clash between them for over fifty years.