A diocese in central China has ordained the ntion’s first Catholic bishop in three years amid tensions between Beijing and the Vatican, and a strained relationship between the Chinese leadership and the Christian religion in general.
The Reverend Joseph Zhang Yinlin (張銀林) was named coadjutor bishop of Anyang in Henan Province in a rare recent case of Chinese officials being in alignment with the Roman Catholic leadership in Rome in a choice for the position, according to the diocese and Catholic Web sites based abroad.
However, relations between the Catholic Church and China remain rocky, with Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平) earlier this year repeating warnings about the dangers of foreign influence over religion in China.
Photo: AP
A continuing campaign to remove exterior crosses and demolish unauthorized churches — both Catholic and Protestant — in Zhejiang Province in recent weeks has prompted an unprecedented public protest by the officially sanctioned bishop of Wenzhou and 26 priests.
The overseas Web sites AsiaNews and Ucanews said that Tuesday’s ordination took part with the Vatican’s approval, possibly indicating a return to the formula under which Chinese authorities, who claim the sole right to appoint bishops, name candidates that are then tacitly accepted by the Vatican.
That unspoken arrangement seemed to have broken down amid worsening relations following the 2012 ordination of Shanghai Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin (馬達欽), the last bishop to be installed prior to Zhang.
The ordination also marked the first appointment of a new Chinese bishop under Pope Francis, who has made a point of conveying messages of friendship to China and the nation’s leaders.
The Henan Catholic Church’s official Web site said 75 priests, 120 nuns and more than 1,500 faithful attended Zhang’s ordination at Anyang’s Sacred Heart Cathedral. It said officials from the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the central government’s United Front Department and Religious Affairs Bureau also attended.
It quoted Zhang as saying he would respect China’s constitution and work to “maintain national unification, social stability and unity in order to contribute to the building of a moderately prosperous society,” echoing standard CCP slogans.
A diocese secretary yesterday confirmed the ordination, but offered no further details.
Three additional bishops taking part in the ceremony were also government-appointed and Vatican-approved, according to the overseas Web sites.
Zhang, 43, is a representative of a younger generation of priests seeking to walk a middle path between their loyalty to the Vatican and the CCP’s overweening desire to control all social and religious institutions. According to his official biography, he graduated from seminary in 1996 and became a priest in 2004.
Hundreds of police and security agents surrounded the church and checked the identities of those attending to weed out anyone not on their list, the overseas Web sites said. They said an overflow crowd of about 500 watched the ceremony via a video link.
While setting a positive tone, Tuesday’s “calm” ordination was more a factor of the Anyang diocese’s good government relations than of any significant shift in relations between the Vatican and Beijing, AsiaNews editor Bernardo Cervellera wrote.
“It would be too much to attribute the ceremony’s smoothness to some signals between China and the Vatican, or to a lessening of tensions or better relations,” Cervellera added.
Officially atheistic China demanded Catholics sever their links with the Vatican in 1951, shortly before it closed churches and imprisoned priests, some for decades.
Beijing now allows Christians to worship openly, but insists that the CCP-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association has the authority to appoint bishops rather than the Holy See.
China has an estimated 12 million Catholics, many of whom worship outside the official association.
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