China's appointment of Catholic bishops, long a source of tension with the Vatican, will be accelerated to combat a "dire" shortage of senior clergy in the Communist country, state media said Thursday.Of China's 97 dioceses, 40 do not have bishops while another 30 are headed by elderly church officials, the China Daily quoted a senior official with China's official Catholic organisation as saying.
"Many of the current bishops are old, with 30 of them above 80 years old," said Liu Bainian, vice president of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.
"We are in dire need of bishops."
Liu blamed the shortage on the Vatican's long-time opposition to China's practice of appointing its own bishops. He said the country could no longer wait for the decades-old rift to heal before making new appointments.
"While Chinese Catholics want to select those with good religious knowledge and love toward the country and the people, the Vatican wants those who oppose the Communist Party," he said.
"Diplomatic factors should not be considered a precondition for religious affairs."
The Vatican has been at loggerheads with the patriotic association since its inception in 1957.
The association came into being six years after China's atheist Communist rulers severed ties with the Holy See in anger over papal recognition of Beijing's rival Taiwan.
Liu said the patriotic association would place more emphasis on appointing young bishops to develop a long-term corps of senior clergy and ensure future continuity in the nation's dioceses.
The Vatican, meanwhile, insists it has sole authority to appoint bishops.
While the official patriotic association has an estimated five million members, an underground or illegal church that remains loyal to the Vatican is said to have about 10 million faithful.
Reconciliation hopes were raised in June by a letter from Pope Benedict XVI to Chinese Catholics loyal to the Holy See.
It said Beijing must respect religious freedom but notably omitted past Vatican attacks on Chinese communism.
However, Liu reiterated shortly after the letter was released that the Vatican must drop recognition of Taiwan before rapprochement can occur and that China must still be able to appoint its own bishops.
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