THE first to disappear was
Joseph Li Liangui, the Bishop of Cangzhou.
He was seen leaving his house
with government officials on November 12th.
Three days later, Bishop
Peter Feng Xinmao of Hengshui stopped answering his mobile telephone.
Both men re-emerged on November 20th in
the city of Chengde in north-eastern China at a ceremony that has
prompted the most serious crisis to come between between the Vatican and
China’s government in years.
Messrs Li and Feng were among eight
bishops who took part in what the Vatican regards as an illicit
episcopal ordination: that of the Reverend Guo Jincai.
A member of the
Chinese parliament, the National People’s Congress, Mr Guo is a former
vice secretary-general of China’s government-backed Catholic church,
the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA).
China-watchers close
to the Vatican believe he is being groomed for yet higher office in the
state apparatus that oversees religious activity.
Hence Beijing’s
determination to have him elevated.
Chinese
officials ignored repeated objections to his ordination conveyed by
Rome through the informal channels whereby the Holy See maintains
contact with the Chinese leadership (they have no diplomatic relations).
According to the Holy See’s press office,
all the bishops at the ceremony were coerced into attending—a claim
denied by the CCPA’s vice-president, Liu Bainian.
The ordination took
place under tight security at at Chengde’s Pinquan church.
Dozens of police surrounded the building and reporters were prevented from entering.
The
Communist Party forced China’s Catholics to cut their links with the
Vatican in 1951 and then created the CCPA six years later.
The effect of
its clampdown was to create an “underground” faction of the church
loyal to the pope.
Estimates of the number of Catholics in China vary
widely (most put the figure at between 12 and 15 million) though it is
generally accepted that the underground part of the church is
significantly bigger than the CCPA.
In recent years there has been some
overlap and reconciliation.
China
had stopped ordaining Catholic bishops without Vatican approval in
2006, when both sides adopted a practice of agreeing informally on
mutually acceptable candidates.
In 2007 Pope Benedict wrote China’s
Catholics a letter that was seen as conciliatory to the authorities.
It
described the naming of bishops by the Vatican as a guarantee of church
unity, but said it was “understandable” that the government would be
attentive to the choice of church leaders whose functions had civil as
well as spiritual implications.
The weekend’s ceremony sent relations
between the Vatican and China back to the dark days of before that truce
was struck.
Relations
had appeared to improve since then, although progress was sometimes
halting.
Last year, the Chinese authorities again arrested Julius Jia
Zhiguo, a much-imprisoned bishop of the underground church who had been working for its reconciliation with the CCPA.
Yet so far this year, ten bishops acceptable to both Beijing and the Vatican have been ordained.
The
latest ceremony has shattered the perception of gradual improvement
that those ordinations had brought about.
And it has inspired some
unusually harsh language from the Catholic side.
“Once more, they have
crucified Jesus,” declared Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, a former
archbishop of Hong Kong and a leading adviser to the pope on Chinese
affairs. The methods used to force the bishops to take part in the
ceremony, he said, were “fascist”.
A
statement from the Vatican on November 24th was only slightly less
strident.
It called the treatment of the bishops a “grave violation of
freedom of religion and conscience” and said the implied claim of the
authorities to guide the life of the Catholic church “offends the Holy
Father, the Church in China and the universal Church”.
The road back from Chengde looks like being a long and arduous one.
SIC: TE/INT'L