On his way to South Korea, Pope Francis will get a rare opportunity to address China’s leadership directly as he flies over the country, whose government does not allow Catholics to recognize his authority.
The pope, who left Rome yesterday, always sends telegrams to the leaders of countries as he passes through their airspace. The routine messages rarely make news, but this time there is keen expectation for what the pope will say to China.
That he is being allowed to cross Chinese airspace at all is seen as a positive, if small, step in the often-fraught relations between the Vatican and Beijing — Pope John Paul II had to skirt China in his Asia tours.
“This is a sign of detente, for sure,” said Father Bernardo Cevellera, head of the Rome-based AsiaNews agency and a specialist in the Catholic Church in China. “But the real miracle would be if [Chinese President] Xi Jinping (習近平) responds with his own telegram and what he says.”
The Vatican has had no formal relations with Beijing since shortly after the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949.
The Catholic Church in China is divided into two communities: an “official” church known as the “Patriotic Association” answerable to the party and an underground church that swears allegiance only to the pope in Rome. The most contentious issue between them is which side gets to name bishops.
“The Holy See favors a respectful and constructive dialogue with authorities to find a solution to the problems that limit the complete practicing of the faith by Catholics and to guarantee an atmosphere of real religious freedom,” Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s No. 2, told an Italian Catholic magazine.
The Vatican has been sending olive branches to China for decades, but a major stumbling block is the Holy See’s continued recognition of Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province.
Another irritant is what missionaries and aid groups have described as a crackdown by Chinese authorities on Christian charity groups near its border with North Korea in recent months. The sweep along the frontier is believed to be aimed at closing off support to North Koreans who flee persecution and poverty in their homeland and illegally enter China before going on to other nations, usually ending up in South Korea.
The Catholic Church in South Korea is a vibrant community, growing at a rate of about 100,000 new members a year, most of them adult converts.
During the six-day trip, the Argentine pope is to hold a “Mass for Peace and Reconciliation” in the Myeong-dong Cathedral in Seoul. Officials of the Catholic Church in South Korea, which counts about 10 percent of the 50 million-strong population among its faithful, said they have asked the North to send a delegation to a papal Mass, but Pyongyang said it could not “for various reasons.”
North Korea’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion provided it does not undermine the state, but outside of a handful of state-run places of worship, open religious activity is banned. The regime has sentenced two foreign missionaries to hard labor and jailed a US tourist for leaving a Bible in a toilet.
A UN report earlier this year cited estimates that between 200,000 and 400,000 of North Korea’s 24 million people are Christians. The number is impossible to verify because most Christians cannot worship openly.
The pope’ six-day visit, the main purpose of which is for him to preside at a gathering of Asian Catholic youths, is the third international trip Francis has taken since his election in March last year and the first by a pontiff to Asia since 1999.
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