Church in the World

Arrest of bishops loyal to Rome mars Vatican’s China meeting

The Holy See has accused the Communist Government in China of creating obstacles to Sino-Vatican relations through the continued arrest of bishops loyal to Rome. Beijing's arrest of a bishop on 30 March, the opening day of a meeting of the Vatican's newly-formed China Commission, dashed much of the optimism that surrounded the start of the meeting. The commission was set up by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 to "study questions of greatest importance" to Catholics in China, and was meeting for only the second time.

In a communiqué of 2 April at the conclusion of the two-day meeting, the Holy See press office said the arrest of northern Chinese Bishop Julius Jia Zhiguo of Zhengding caused "profound sorrow" and was "unfortunately ... not an isolated case". Other churchmen in China had also been "deprived of their freedom" or "subjected to undue pressures and limitations on their pastoral activities".

These actions, the Vatican said, created "obstacles to that climate of dialogue with the competent authorities" that the Pope wished to have with Beijing. The arrest of Bishop Jia Zhiguo, 74, who is not affiliated with the State-approved Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, cast a cloud over the gathering of the more than 30-member commission in Rome. The Vatican did not list the names of the participants, but it was believed that five bishops from mainland China attended, as well as members of religious orders in China.

Bishop Jia Zhiguo was reportedly taken from his home by five police officers. According to the Rome-based AsiaNews, he had been under 24-hour surveillance to prevent him meeting the "official" state-approved bishop, with whom he had reconciled on Vatican advice. According to some local sources, the police told Bishop Jia Zhiguo that "this unity [with the ‘official' bishop] is bad because it is desired by a foreign power like the Vatican. If there must be unity, it must come through the Government and the Patriotic Association".

Pope Benedict set up the China Commission shortly after sending an unprecedented letter to Chinese Catholics, in which he encouraged unity among members of the so-called "underground" Church loyal to Rome and those belonging to the "official" state-sanctioned Patriotic Association.

The brief Vatican communiqué, which was issued only in Italian, said the arrest of Bishop Jia Zhiguo was just one example of the "complex problems of the actual ecclesial situation in China that derive not only from the difficulties within the Church but also from the uneasy relations with the civil authorities". The commission's main order of business was to find ways to give "a more adequate human, intellectual, spiritual and pastoral formation" to seminarians, priests and Religious. But a report in UCAN News (Hong Kong) said participants "devoted about half their meeting" to difficulties with the Communist Government. "They discussed, among other things, the commemoration in Beijing on 19 December 2008 of the 50 years of ‘self-election and self-ordination of bishops'," it said.

n The 300,000-member Chinese House Church Alliance, an underground Protestant movement in China, is among eight Chinese groups that signed a 3 April open letter challenging Beijing to account for its human rights violations against Chinese citizens, and criticising the illegal detention and searching of house church leaders and scholars.