Friday, March 29, AD 2024 10:53am

PopeWatch: China

Sandro Magister shows us how the recently renewed Vatican-China deal keeps getting better and better:

The “poor Uyghurs” Pope Francis has included for the first time among the persecuted – in a passage of his latest book to be released on December 1 in several languages ​​- have in recent days dominated the news regarding relations between the Vatican and China.

In effect, the immediate, polemical reaction of the Chinese government – which rejected the pope’s accusation as “without a basis in the facts,” given “the full rights of existence, development, and freedom of religious belief enjoyed by all ethnic groups” in China – has exposed the realpolitikal reasons for such a prolonged silence on the part of both Francis and the higher-ups of the Church on one of the most blatant and systematic forms of religious persecutions taking place in China (in the photo, a “re-education” camp) ; a silence broken only, up to now, by the isolated denunciations of cardinals Joseph Zen Zekiun, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, and Charles Maung Bo, archbishop of Yangon.

But the uproar over the question of the Uyghur Muslims has obscured another important news item: the first appointment of a Catholic bishop made in keeping with the secret accord signed by the Holy See and China on September 22 2018 and extended last month for another two years.

The new bishop is Thomas Chen Tianhao, 58, and he has been placed at the helm of the diocese of Qingdao, in the rich coastal province of Shandong.

The diocese had been vacant since June of 2018, after the death aged 94 of his predecessor, Joseph Li Mingshu, recognized by both the Holy See and the Beijing authorities but clearly pliant above all to the latter and in particular to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, the most pervasive tool for the supervision of the Catholic Church in China, whose supreme head was for decades Anthony Liu Bainian, also of Shandong.

The consecration of the new bishop took place on November 23 at the cathedral of Qingdao. It was presided over by Linyi bishop John Fang Xingyao, who is also president of the Patriotic Association and vice-president of the council of bishops, a false simulacrum of an episcopal conference that brings together only the bishops recognized by the regime and that is entitled – under the secret accord, as far as one can guess – to select and propose each new bishop to the pope, following a rigged “election” in the respective diocese by representatives of the clergy, religious, and laity incorporated into the regime.

In confirmation of this, the Asia News agency of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions noted that in the formula for the consecration of the new bishop of Qingdao “the mandate of the council of bishops was mentioned, but nothing was said about the pope and the Hole See.” His prior “election” is thought to have taken place on November 19, 2019.

Like his predecessor if not even more so, the new bishop Chen is also a man of the regime, a longstanding official both local and national of the Patriotic Association, whose high-ranking members were present in good numbers at the ordination.

Go here to read the rest.  Our Manchurian Pope will take action on this on the eleventh of never.

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Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Wednesday, December 2, AD 2020 4:05am

Evidently the “poor Uyghurs” business must have escaped the editor or was intended as a hat-tip to Islam. “Pope” Francis will surely send his apologies.

Captain Thai Tea
Captain Thai Tea
Wednesday, December 2, AD 2020 10:25pm

NC Register has a good article from a witness who has been imprisoned in China for 20 years! starting at age 19! He’s been through it and no doubt China is still doing it!

NC Register Harry Wu

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