Taiwan is not opposed to dialogue between the Vatican and China based on human rights and religious freedom, the Presidential Office said on Monday, amid reports that the two have taken a major step toward ending their six-decade estrangement.
The Wall Street Journal on Monday reported that the Vatican and Beijing had reached a consensus on the appointment of cardinals, heralding better relations between the two sides.
The Vatican has diplomatic ties with the Republic of China and is Taiwan’s only diplomatic ally in Europe.
Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) said diplomacy is not a zero-sum game.
“From our perspective, the most important thing is to continue to maintain our long and stable diplomatic relations,” Huang said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Vatican is not a secular country, and its external relations focus on pastoral matters and the gospel, so it has been very concerned about the treatment of Christians in China’s underground churches.
China’s officially sanctioned churches are not integrated with the Vatican.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin told Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) during his trip to Rome in early September that the Vatican has to engage in dialogue with China to spread the gospel and pursue its pastoral mission.
Bilateral dialogue has been confined to church affairs and has not touched on political and diplomatic affairs, the ministry cited Perolin as telling Chen.
Lawmakers have said that China and the Vatican have begun a normalization process, but whether the Vatican will sever ties with Taiwan and establish relations with China remains to be seen.
The lawmakers asked the government to stay on top of the situation and come up with a contingency plan.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Tang Te-ming (唐德明) said the ministry has said the Vatican-China dialogue will not affect diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and the KMT hopes the ministry will not let the public down.
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