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Vatican visit quells doubts over ties

A senior Vatican official arrived in Taipei yesterday to reaffirm ties with the government here, after the recent appointment of five new bishops by the Chinese Catholic Bishops College in defiance of the Holy See.

"My presence here is a sign that the relationship is very good," Paul Josef Cordes, archbishop and president of the Pontifical Council, said upon arriving for a six-day visit.

Stressing that the Vatican will never forsake its long-standing relations with Taiwan, Cordes said people here need not worry about possible changes in its ties with the Holy See.

"The people here should not be afraid that there would be a change of the relationship," Cordes said.

President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) invited Cordes to visit the island, home to 300,000 Roman Catholics.

Taipei was alarmed last year when Chinese President Jiang Zemin (|蕞A民) told an Italian newspaper that Beijing was ready to improve relations with the Vatican if it broke its diplomatic ties with Taiwan and "recognized the People's Republic of China as the only legitimate government" of all China.

The archbishop was due to call on President Lee and visit the earthquake-stricken Taichung area.

More than 2,400 people were killed when a quake struck the island on Sept. 21.

"I'll see for myself the island's general post-quake situation and various rehabilitation and reconstruction projects in the hardest-hit disaster zones," Cordes said.

In contrast with the Vatican's rift with Beijing, Cordes said: "The Holy Father is trusting very much the archbishops and cardinal bishops of the Republic of China [on Taiwan]."

China's official church earlier this month ordained five bishops in defiance of the Vatican.

The Vatican was surprised at the ordinations as they were seen as adding obstacles to the path to the relaxation of tensions between the Holy See and Beijing.

Diplomatic ties between the Vatican and China were severed in 1957, after the Vatican excommunicated two bishops appointed by Mao Zedong (?翾A東). Since then, Beijing has named 130 bishops and 900 priests without the Vatican's approval.

The Vatican is one of Taiwan's two diplomatic allies in Europe. The other is the Balkan state of Macedonia.
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