The excommunicated Chinese bishop, Paul Lei Shi-yin, has committed “a sacrilege” by ordaining four new priests on June 29 in Leshan diocese, southwestern China, the Vatican Archbishop, Savio Hon Tai Fai, said in Rome the day after the ordination ceremony. Lei Shiyin ordained four new priests on June 29, the first anniversary of his own illicit ordination, UCA News reported.
He was ordained bishop without the approval of Pope Benedict and in defiance of the Holy See’s clear instructions on 29 June 2011, and this resulted in his being the first Chinese priest to be publicly declared excommunicated by the Holy See since the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976.
Lei Shiyin should not have ordained the four priests Archbishop Savio Hon told Vatican Insider, June 30, because he had already incurred excommunication latae sententiae in 2011 by being ordained bishop without the papal mandate and so “has been deprived of communion in the Church.”
Therefore, he said, “It is a sacrilege for him to receive and to administer any sacrament” and, furthermore, “No faithful layperson, not to speak of the clergy, should be involved in any act of sacrilege”.
Archbishop Hon explained that “for the good of the community, the Church does not allow any illegitimate bishop to exercise any Episcopal function which has not been given to him by the Pope through the pontifical mandate.”
In actual fact, it had been planned that Lei Shi-yin would ordain five new priests, but one of the five deacons who was to be ordained refused to be ordained priest by the excommunicated bishop, local Church sources told UCA News.
The other four deacons accepted to be ordained by Lei Shi-yin after the diocese allegedly promised each of them a car and a sum of money, estimated to be worth Chinese Yuan 150,000 (Euro 18,640, or US$23,600 ), the Asian Catholic news agency reported.
Commenting on this courageous act by one of the deacons, Archbishop Hon, the Chinese-born Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, said; “Ever since the 1990's I have been able to meet many (Chinese) seminarians” and “most of them are firm in faith and in front of pressure have heroically refrained from being ordained by illegitimate bishops.”
Indeed, he said, “The same is true for many candidates approved by the Holy See to be ordained bishop. At the cost of great sacrifice they have heroically resisted the con-celebration of illegitimate bishops in their ordination ceremonies”.
Aware that the Chinese authorities are planning to ordain two more bishops during the month of July – one in Shanghai (with the Pope’s approval) and the other in Harbin (without the papal mandate), and seeking to prevent further wounds to Church unity, the Vatican Archbishop reaffirmed the Holy See’s firm position on Episcopal ordinations.
It is “absolutely forbidden” for a priest to be ordained bishop without the papal mandate, he stated, and whoever does so incurs automatic excommunication (latae sententiae). In other words, the candidate to be bishop in Harbin should refuse to go ahead.
Likewise, he said, it is “forbidden” for an illegitimate bishop to participate in an Episcopal ordination that has the pope’s approval, he too seriously breaks Church law. In other words, he wants to avoid this happening at the ordination in Shanghai.