Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) and his delegation to the Vatican on Friday received a warm welcome at Castel Gandolfo, Pope Paul VI’s summer residence.
Chen, who led the delegation to the Holy See to attend a ceremony today to canonize Paul VI and six others, visited the palace south of Rome as part of his itinerary.
They were the only visitors on an outing perceived as a special arrangement by the palace.
Photo: CNA
The trip came just after China and the Vatican signed an agreement concerning the appointment of bishops in China.
Chen was appointed by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) as her envoy to the Holy See to bolster ties between Taipei and the Vatican.
Castel Gandolfo was designated by pope Urban VIII in 1623 as a summer residence and every pope after him had resided in the palace during the summer before Pope Francis broke the routine in 2013 and opened it to the public in 2016.
After visiting Castel Gandolfo, Chen prayed with his wife, Luo Feng-ping (羅鳳蘋), in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary.
With assistance from a tour guide, Chen and his delegation, which also included Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Kelly Hsieh (謝武樵), surveyed portraits of every pope and their private living rooms, as well as their wardrobes and furniture, including an antique desk in the study, where the popes mapped out their policies.
They toured the pope’s living room, which was used as a makeshift delivery room during World War II for female refugees, who between them gave birth to more than 40 babies in it.
Pope Francis is to canonize pope Paul VI today, along with former San Salvador archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero and five others, at the 15th ordinary general assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which runs through Oct. 28.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater