The bishop in the southern Chinese region of Guangxi has welcomed an offer by the head of the Macau Catholic Church to train priests from the former's diocese.
Bishop John Baptist Tan Yanquan of Nanning, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, said his diocese lacks the resources that Macau diocese enjoys, and can learn much from it.
He said he is glad and grateful that Bishop Jose Lai Hung-seng of Macau "invited our priests to receive weeklong training sessions" in Macau. "But we have to seek approval from the local government," he added.Bishop Lai, 63, made the invitation when he led a six-person delegation that included two priests, a nun and three laypersons to Guangxi from April 20-24.
The Macau and Guangxi Churches have had ties in the past. During the 1940s and 1950s, Guangxi's Beihai diocese sent seminarians to Macau's St. Joseph's Seminary to receive priestly formation.
Bishop Lai, a member of the Vatican's China Commission, told UCA News that he was impressed by the Guangxi Church's focus on evangelization. He said it is important to "update" the knowledge of priests, nuns and lay catechists through ongoing formation, and he was happy to provide that.
Guangxi diocese has an active social service program and its Charity Association in recent years has organized laypeople to visit and help the elderly, sick and needy.
Bishop Lai also expressed hope that the two Churches could cooperate more on social services in future, and that his visit would pave the way for lay Catholics from his diocese to cooperate formally with the Guangxi Church.
Cyril Law, a member of the delegation, said the visit had opened up official contacts and exchanges between the two dioceses, although Macau laypeople have been giving support to the Guangxi Church for some time, largely through sponsoring building projects.
Law is a lecturer of the Church-run Macau Inter-University Institute, which has provided formation for mainland priests from Hebei years ago.
Describing his recent trip, he said: "We made brief visits to churches in the cities but were unable to go to the countryside where the local Church carries out its main pastoral work. Nor were we able to visit the Catholics among the ethnic minorities in the short trip."
The delegation visited the newly inaugurated Our Lady of China Cathedral in Nanning, and churches in Beihai, Guilin and Liuzhou cities.
Officials from Guangxi's United Front Work Department and Religious Affairs Bureau as well as two Macau government representatives accompanied the delegation.
In 2003, the government-approved Church in China merged the four dioceses in Guangxi -- Beihai, Guilin, Nanning and Wuzhou diocese -- into one diocese, Guangxi diocese. It has 107 priests and nuns, 70,000 Catholics and 101 churches and meeting venues.
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Source (UCAN)
SV (ED)