Mgr Casimir Wang Milu, retired bishop of Tianshui (Qinzhou), Gansu Province, died at around 1 am this past Tuesday morning.
He was 74.
The prelate’s funeral is planned for this Saturday, but since he was
an underground bishop, not recognised by Beijing, that still needs to be
cleared with the authorities.
In late January, Mgr Wang suffered a hemorrhage and pneumonia. He was
admitted to a hospital in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu Province.
He was secretly ordained bishop in 1981 in Qinzhou (Tianshui) by Mgr
Peter Joseph Fan Xueyan of Baoding (Hebei), a major figure in the
underground Church.
Two years later, he was arrested in Beijing and
sentenced to ten years in prison.
The people who knew him say he was full of evangelising zeal and was very loyal to the pope.
In the past, he was suspected of abusing the special powers conferred
by the Holy See to the underground Church to ordain bishops without
papal mandate.
The latter were repealed by Benedict XVI in his Letter
of to Chinese Catholics (2007).
The Holy See suspended Mgr Wang in 2003.
After that, he retired, but remained in Gangu County, Gansu.
Born in 1942, Mgr Wang was ordained a priest in 1979.
His younger brother, John Wang Ruowang was secretly ordained in 2011 as the ordinary bishop of Tianshui.