There is growing international concern over the fate of Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu, the bishop of the Apostolic Prefecture of Xinxiang in China, arrested by the Chinese Communist authorities shortly before Pentecost along with seven priests and ten seminarians.
China has never recognised the Xinxiang Prefecture in the north-western province of Henan, which today has approximately 100,000 faithful, since it was established in 1945. Bishop Zhang, 63, was ordained in 1991 and appointed by the Vatican.
According to a new decree which came into force on 1 May, listed as “Decree No 15” by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, clerics of all religions are now required to ask permission in advance to carry out religious activities.
In the week before Pentecost on 23 May, in an operation which said to have taken several days and in which more than 100 police officers reportedly took part, Bishop Zhang and his priests and seminarians were arrested as criminals. The arrests came after the diocese decided to use a derelict building as a seminary. Bishop Zhang and his fellow Catholics were accused of violating the new rules.
The clampdown in Xinxiang took place a few days before Pope Francis called on Catholics the world over to pray for Christians in China who celebrate the feast of Mary, Help of Christians on 24 May.
“The Mother of the Lord and of the Church is venerated with particular devotion in the Sheshan shrine in Shanghai and is invoked assiduously by Christian families in the trials and hopes of daily life,” Francis said. Around the 24 May feast day, Chinese Catholics traditionally set out on a pilgrimage to Sheshan. This year the Chinese authorities forbade all such pilgrimages.
On 10 June, the French bishops’ conference publicly expressed its “deep concern” over the arrest of Bishop Zhang and his priests and seminarians.
“May God give you the strength to stand in trial. May your situation quickly return to normal and worthy of the greatness of your country,” bishops’ conference president, Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort of Reims, wrote, offering Bishop Zhang and his confreres “the fraternal greetings of the Catholics of France”. He denounced the imprisonment as “a particularly harsh and unjust test” and asked all faithful Catholics to pray for the imprisoned group.
The St Augustin China Centre near Bonn in Germany, which is run by missionaries of the Society of the Divine Word, described the imprisonment of Bishop Zhang and his confreres as “serious”. The editor of the monthly China Today (which is published in more than seven languages), the well-known China expert, Katharina Wenzel-Teuber, told KNA that almost all the staff of the Xinxiang diocese were now in prison.
Wondering what the secret Vatican-China Agreement of 2018 was actually worth, she said: “While in previous years the communist authorities tolerated clerics who were not officially recognised by the Communist government, they are now increasingly clamping down on them. Since the new decree came into force on 1 May, priests who were members of the Chinese Underground Church are under great pressure to register with the official, state-recognised Patriotic Church.”
This is contrary to the 2018 Provisional Agreement between the Vatican and Beijing, which was renewed for two years in October 2020, she explained. The contents of the Agreement and of the Renewal were confidential to date but, in June 2019, the Holy See had published a significant guideline. It stated that Rome and Beijing had agreed that in future negotiations they would find “a form of civil registration for the clergy which would show greater respect for Catholic teaching and therefore for the consciences of those concerned.” Moreover, the guideline specifically stated that putting pressure on the Underground Church, should be avoided. “It is quite obvious that the Chinese side is not keeping to what it agreed to do,” said Wenzel-Teuber.