China’s persecution of Catholics has escalated, despite overtures from the Holy See, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday after a top Vatican official confirmed that the two sides are talking about the Roman Curia opening a representative office in Beijing, among other issues.
The Vatican is expected to open a dialogue with China on establishing a representative office and the fate of its loyalist “underground bishops” after the two sides in 2020 agreed to extend a provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops inked two years earlier.
Speaking in an interview with the Catholic publication America dated Tuesday, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s secretary for relations with states, said that bilateral talks are being conducted to resolve the issues.
“There has been discussion on things like that,” he was quoted as saying. “Discussions, yes, but no conclusions yet.”
Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) said the Vatican has been requesting China’s permission for a representative office to be established since Cardinal Angelo Sodano first proposed it in 1999.
The Vatican had raised the issue out of concern for the welfare of millions of Chinese Catholics, which led to the provisional agreement being inked in 2018, she said.
As the Chinese Communist Party’s oppression of Catholics and other religious groups has intensified, it shows that the agreement did not bring about an improvement in religious freedoms in China, she said.
That Beijing had made solemn promises to the Vatican did not escape the ministry’s notice, she said, adding that the ministry is closely monitoring the state of religious freedom in China.
Regarding the Sino-Vatican provisional agreement, Taiwan’s consistent stance and hope is for it to improve religious freedom in China, she said, adding that Taipei would continue to deepen its ties with the Vatican.
Taiwan’s national interests include protecting the rights of Taiwanese Catholics as the ministry seeks to develop a long-lasting friendship with the Vatican that is based on common values, she said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS