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CURRENT
ISSUE: September 19, 2005
VOL.
43, NO. 16Oakland,
CA
Hopes for China-Vatican relations hit road block
VATICAN CITY—After
months of backroom negotiations aimed at harmonizing relations between
the world’s largest Church and its most populous country, China
and the Vatican find themselves locked in a bureaucratic wrestling match
with little room to maneuver.
Ever since the death of Pope John Paul II this past April, a wave of optimism
has been building over the possibility that decades of icy relations between
China and the Vatican were beginning to thaw.
But that wave subsided Sept. 10 after the Chinese government appeared
to reject Pope Benedict XVI’s invitation to four Chinese bishops
to join him in Rome for an upcoming synod, an international congress of
Roman Catholic bishops.
Church officials say the pope’s invitation to the Chinese bishops
was aimed at reconciling the Communist Party’s Catholic Patriotic
Association of China and the country’s “underground”
church, which is loyal to the Vatican.
An estimated 5 million Chinese Catholics belong to the state-controlled
church, which severed ties with the Vatican in 1951 after China’s
atheist Communist Party took control of government. The underground church
is believed to have at least 8 million faithful.
A key sticking point has been who holds power to appoint Chinese bishops.
The Vatican maintains the pope has sole authority in naming bishops in
China or any other country, while Catholic Patriotic Association of China
officials say that power belongs to the communist government.
Two of the bishops, Jin Luxian of Shanghai and Li Duan of Xian, are key
leaders in the official church who reportedly have the Vatican’s
tacit approval. A third, Bishop Li Jingfeng, 85, of Fengziang, was recognized
by the official Chinese church in 2004 despite his longtime membership
in the underground church. The fourth, Bishop Wei Jingyi, 47, of Qiqihar,
is a well-known papal loyalist who has spent four years in Chinese labor
camps for his ties to the underground church.
Reconciliation might be expected to undercut the powers of the state-controlled
church and marginalize powerful CPAC officials like Bishop Michael Fu
Tieshan of Beijing, Vatican observers note.
“They are just worried about their uselessness,” said Father
Bernardo Cervellera, a China expert with the Pontifical Institute for
Foreign Missionaries. Father Cervellera said the Vatican had bypassed
the CPAC and sought approval of the bishops’ visit from the highest
levels of Chinese government.
