Vatican delegation visits Beijing

A Vatican delegation visited China three weeks ago, holding secret talks with the ruling Communist Party and visiting at least one bishop and a seminary in Beijing. The Vatican delegation arrived on 11 October, comprising representatives from the Secretariat of State and the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples. It was the first official visit to Beijing in five years. Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said around the time of the visit that “the situation [in Sino-Vatican relations] is not yet ripe, but one is working slowly and discreetly for an understanding”.

The delegation was welcomed to China by Bishop Joseph Ma Yinglin, president of the government-sanctioned bishops’ conference and rector of the Beijing seminary, but also an illicit bishop ordained without papal mandate. Neither side has made public statements about the talks.

It is significant that the six-member delegation visited Bishop Joseph Li Shan of Beijing, one of the minority of Catholic bishops in China in full communion with Rome. He has also engaged in dialogue with Chinese authorities and has participated in two illicit ordinations of bishops.

Fr Jeroom Heyndrickx, of the Verbiest Institute of Leuven Catholic University in Belgium and a veteran China watcher, described the visit to Bishop Li and to the seminary as “a positive signal meaning that the negotiations went well”.  
(See Mary Dejevsky, page 10)