Hong Kong’s bishop, Cardinal John Tong Hon, has called on Beijing and the Vatican to engage in dialogue to resolve the dramatic situation of Shanghai’s auxiliary bishop, Thaddeus Ma Daqin, who has been deprived of his freedom by the Chinese authorities since July 7.
“Dialogue between China and the Vatican is a must. It is very urgent now to resolve the dramatic case of Bishop Ma Daqin,” Cardinal Tong told UCA News in an exclusive comment, July 13.
It was his first public statement on the dramatic events that have greatly upset the Catholic community in Shanghai and throughout mainland China. Sources say Bishop Ma is being detained at the Sheshan seminary, on the outskirts of Shanghai.
“Only with dialogue will a ‘win-win’ result eventually be achieved”, the cardinal said.
He criticised Beijing government’s ongoing involvement in the ordination of Catholic bishops. He did so after two state-entities not recognized by the Holy See– the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) and the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China (BCCCC), announced they had opened an “investigation” into Bishop Ma’s ordination in Shanghai’s St Ignatius Cathedral on July 7. They claimed he then “allegedly broke the rules of the BCCCC.”
Bishop Ma was ordained with the approval of the Pope and the Chinese government. But his announcement, at the ordination ceremony, that he was resigning from the positions he held in the CCPA and would no longer hold any such posts so as devote himself totally to his ministry as a bishop, profoundly disturbed the government officials present. They viewed his statement as a serious challenge to their system of control of the Catholic Church in China, and so had him taken away and detained.
Cardinal Tong, for his part, emphasized that the ordination of a bishop is neither a political nor an economic matter and should not be treated as such, UCA News reported.
He said the Chinese government needs to respect human rights and religion for the sake of justice, human dignity and the welfare of the people and emphasized that this is the only way of achieving social harmony and a good international image.
“I appreciated Bishop Ma’s courage,” Tong stated. The cardinal is a member of the Commission for the Church in China set up by Benedict XVI in 2007.
He revealed that Ma’s ordination had already produced some good fruit. It has brought the faithful of the “official” and “unregistered” Catholic communities closer together. This is “positive” for the Church in China, he stated.
Commenting on the July 6 ordination of Father Joseph Yue Fusheng as bishop of Harbin without papal mandate, Cardinal Tong said “Illicit bishops have become isolated as Catholics are staying away from them” and so he said, in a message clearly directed to the Beijing authorities, “there is no point in proceeding with illicit ordinations.”
The Hong Kong cardinal is an expert on the Church in China. Since 1980 he has been head of the Holy Spirit Study Centre – the leading Catholic study centre on the Church in China.
“We have heard that in Chinese ordinations some participating bishops were rewarded with money and other goods”, he told UCA News.
“It seems to me that this amounts to cases of corruption”, he stated.
It was the second time this week that a Chinese cardinal had expressed concern over the situation of Bishop Ma and of the Catholic Church in the mainland.
On July 11, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, the emeritus bishop of Hong Kong who is also a member of the papal Commission for the Church in China, expressed his concern for Bishop Ma – his former student, by action rather than words. He joined the public protest organized by Hong Kong’s diocesan Justice and Peace Commission in front of the Beijing Government’s Liaison office in Hong Kong.
Cardinal Zen and other protestors carried posters calling for Bishop Ma’s release and an end to the ordination of bishops in the mainland without the papal mandate.
Hong Kong’s Justice and Peace Commission is also mobilizing Catholics to show solidarity with Bishop Ma by reciting the Rosary in front of the Liaison Office and by attending Mass on July 16, to pray for religious freedom in China.
In recent days, however, the Chinese authorities have been putting pressure on the Church in Shanghai. Government officials there have interrogated seven priests and two nuns, local Church sources revealed.
“They each face long interrogations, up to eight hours a day,” one source told UCA News. “They cannot eat and rest well. We worry about their mental and physical health.”
The authorities there have compelled Catholic webmasters to remove all reference to him from their websites.
But they cannot stop Catholics from praying for the bishop who has given new hope to the Church in China.