China's state-run church oversaw the formal appointment of another Catholic bishop without papal approval yesterday in a move likely to further strain relations with Rome.
Vincent Zhan (
Hong Kong Cable TV showed Zhan holding a gold staff and wearing the white pointed hat used by bishops.
"The ceremony was held today," a church official surnamed Bian said. "Bishop Zhan has been promoted by the state church, the Vatican was not involved with this."
Over the past three weeks, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, the state-run administrator of China's Catholic Church, has overseen the ordination of three new bishops, two of which came without papal approval.
The refusal to seek papal approval has angered Rome and has set back efforts by the Vatican to improve ties with Beijing and hampered efforts to eventually establish formal relations with China.
Zhan's rise to the bishophric however was an automatic appointment as the diocese's previous bishop passed away last year, said Liu Bainian (
Richard Madsen, an expert on China-Vatican ties at the University of California-San Diego, said: "They [Beijing] had to know that this would cause a serious reaction, a breakdown in the efforts to normalization."
"This shows at some level, they just didn't want relations to go forward," he said.
The Vatican declined to comment on Zhan's installation.
Zhan's situation underscores the stakes for Beijing and the Vatican. The Mindong diocese has more than 60,000 Catholics, but only 10,000 worship in state-authorized churches, according to Catholic Church estimates in Hong Kong.
That has led to parallel church structures, one serving the underground Catholics, the other serving the Beijing-approved church.
Priests in the state-sanctioned church as well as the "underground" church around Ningde said they were upset by Zhan's elevation, warning it may stoke tensions between Beijing and the Vatican, and between the two sides of China's divided church.
"We've been under heavy pressure to attend," said a local priest in the state-recognized church, who nonetheless believed the Vatican should choose bishops. He asked to remain anonymous.
Zhan said that the underground church had boycotted the mass, despite his invitation for representatives to attend.
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