China's bishops opened a meeting Tuesday to choose leaders of the
government-backed Catholic church amid tensions with the Vatican after
it denounced the recent ordination of a bishop who did not have the
pope's approval.
The meeting in Beijing to elect new heads of the
Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and the Council of Chinese
Bishops will be another source of friction because the Vatican
disapproves of such assemblies, saying both organizations run counter to
Catholic doctrine.
If clerics more interested in shoring up
Communist Party control are elected into top positions, it will likely
hinder the tentative efforts at outreach made by Pope Benedict XVI.
Chinese authorities also are pressuring some bishops to attend the Beijing meeting, a Vatican-affiliated agency said.
Ties
between China and the Vatican already were strained because of a
dispute over the Nov. 20 ordination of Rev. Joseph Guo Jincai as bishop.
The Vatican also slammed Chinese authorities for forcing
Vatican-approved bishops to attend that ordination ceremony.
Communist
China forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951,
and worship is allowed only in state-backed churches, although millions
of Chinese belong to unofficial congregations loyal to Rome.
The
National Congress of Chinese Catholic Representatives runs until
Thursday and will be attended by bishops, priests and believers, said
Liu Bainian, vice chairman of the Patriotic Association, which
supervises the Catholic church, including overseeing the appointment of
all of China's bishops.
"It's just an election of a new round of
leadership, like the election of the leadership of the National People's
Congress," Liu said, referring to the country's rubberstamp
legislature.
He declined further comment.
The Patriotic
Association has for years been a stumbling block to formal ties between
the Holy See and Beijing. Run by hard-liners, it does Beijing's bidding,
not the Vatican's.
The last chairman of the Patriotic
Association, Bishop Fu Tieshan, was a hard-liner who clashed with Rome
over Beijing's right to independently appoint bishops without papal
approval and the Vatican's diplomatic ties with Taiwan, which China
claims as its territory.
Ahead of the conclave, Chinese police
sought out at least two bishops in an effort to ensure their attendance,
according to AsiaNews, a Vatican-affiliated missionary news agency that
closely covers the church in China.
Monsignor Feng Xinmao, bishop
of Hengshui, a city in Hebei, was removed from his official residence
despite efforts by parishioners and priests to hold back officers,
AsiaNews said. He was then taken to an isolated location outside the
city southwest of Beijing, it said.
Separately, the bishop of
Hebei's Cangzhou city, Monsignor Li Lianggui, had gone into hiding,
leading police to say they may issue a nationwide arrest warrant,
AsiaNews said.
The meeting has been put off a few times in recent
years, perhaps due to the Vatican's objections, said Anthony Lam, a
researcher at the church-affiliated Holy Spirit Study Center in Hong
Kong.
"They know they cannot postpone it forever, so they are trying to
do it now as a low-key event," he said.
The two organizations' top
positions have been vacant since Bishop Fu's death in 2007.
He was head
of the Patriotic Association from 1998 and served as acting head of the
Bishops' Conference for about two years.
Fu's simultaneous control of
both bodies underscored the government's tight grip on the official
church.
Lam said that despite the recent setback, Beijing still wants to normalize ties with the Vatican.
"For
them, a harmonious situation is one of the most important things now in
China and so if they can give certain degree of freedom to the church
people in return for their loyalty, they would like to do that," Lam
said.
Calls to police, government religious affairs bureaus, and
Catholic churches in Hengshui and Cangzhou either rang unanswered or
were answered by people who said they either had no information or were
not authorized to comment.
Staff at the Patriotic Association in Beijing
said they could not receive telephoned inquiries and Vice Chairman
Liu's mobile phone was shut off.
The meeting also comes as about
100 Catholic students at a seminary in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei,
ended a two-week strike over the appointment of a government official as
vice rector of the school, the Bangkok-based Union of Catholic Asian
News said.
Provincial authorities withdrew the appointment, prompting
students to return to classes.
In recent years under Benedict,
China-Vatican relations have improved and Benedict has said that
restoring diplomatic relations with Beijing is a priority.
Disputes over
appointments in China's official church have been avoided by quietly
conferring on candidates, leading to several ordinations of bishops with
the Holy See's blessing.
The ordination of Rev. Guo was the first
without papal approval in almost five years, and the Holy See had
warned reconciliation efforts would be set back if bishops were forced
to attend.
The Vatican blasted the government for allowing the
Patriotic Association, and in particular vice chairman Liu, "to adopt
attitudes that gravely damage the Catholic Church."
SIC: AP/INT'L