China-Vatican ties tested by second bishop

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) – A battle between Beijing and the
Vatican over control of church posts flared on Wednesday as
China’s state-backed Catholic church installed another bishop
without papal blessing.

Liu Xinhong was consecrated bishop of Wuhu in the eastern
province of Anhui at the city’s Saint Joseph’s Cathedral. But
like the priest who became bishop of Kunming in southwestern
China on Sunday, Liu had failed to win the Vatican’s mandate.

“The Vatican is very sorry and displeased,” Father Bernardo
Cervellera, director of the Rome-based AsiaNews service that
reports on Chinese Catholicism, told Reuters.

“This threatens to destroy the dialogue between China and
the Vatican,” he said of the latest appointments.

In recent years, Beijing and the Holy See — warily mulling
restoration of formal ties — came to an understanding that
usually allowed prospective priests and bishops to seek Vatican
approval before taking up posts in the state-controlled church.
Now that arrangement appears to be breaking down, as the state
church administration pushes through its own choices.

A third or more of China’s 12 million or so Catholics
belong to an “underground” church that stayed loyal to the
Vatican throughout decades of harsh repression under China’s
Communist Party after it won power in 1949.

With easing of restrictions on religion since the 1980s,
growing numbers of clergy in the state-controlled church have
also sought Rome’s blessing, and it was usually given.
Cervellera estimated that about 85 percent of China’s bishops
had papal approval.

In 2004, China had 120 bishops, 74 in the state-backed
church, according to the Holy Spirit Study Center in Hong Kong,
which monitors the Chinese church.

But Liu Xinhong, a priest from Anhui, was not under
consideration by Rome and was considered by local Catholics to
be “too close to the government,” said Cervellera.

Liu Bainian, a vice chairman of the Chinese Patriotic
Catholic Association who often speaks for the state church,
rejected claims that the recent appointments threatened ties
with the Vatican. He suggested that his critics, who include
Hong Kong’s Cardinal Joseph Zen, were politically motivated.

“I’m afraid that some people in the Church are not acting
in the Church’s interests, but saying things for their own
interest, status and political ideology,” he told Reuters.

Many Chinese Catholics loyal to Rome would be disturbed
that bishops who themselves carry Rome’s mandate had attended
installation ceremonies frowned on by the Holy See, said Joseph
Kung, whose Cardinal Kung Foundation publicizes restrictions on
China’s underground church. This suggested that Beijing, not
the Vatican, holds sway over them, he added.

Bishops had been under “intense pressure” to attend the
ceremonies, although many had still stayed away, and the
installations had become divisive tests of loyalties, said a
Chinese priest who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bishop Wu Shizhen of Nanchang in southern China, who is
recognized by the Vatican, was due to officiate at the Wuhu
consecration mass, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post
reported on Wednesday. A church official in Wuhu declined to
comment, saying only that a total of five bishops had attended.

At last two bishops who attended the Yunnan installation
were also accepted by Rome, said the Chinese priest.

“This should serve as a wake-up call to the Vatican about
how insincere China has been,” Kung said. “Obedience to the
Pope is core to Catholic dogma, but this runs entirely against
that.”

(Additional reporting by Guo Shipeng)