Pope Benedict XVI yesterday invited all Roman Catholics in China to unite under his jurisdiction and urged Beijing to restore diplomatic ties and permit religious freedom.
He called the state-run Catholic Church "incompatible" with Catholic doctrine, but nevertheless made unprecedented overtures toward it.
In an eagerly awaited letter to the faithful in China taking up a priority of his papacy, Benedict insisted on his right to appoint bishops, but said he trusted that an agreement could be reached with Beijing on nominations.
Significantly, Benedict revoked previous Vatican-issued restrictions on contacts with the clergy of the official church and recognized that some Chinese faithful have no choice but to attend officially recognized Masses.
The Vatican said in a note accompanying the letter that it was prepared to move its diplomatic representation from Taiwan to Beijing "at any time" as soon as an agreement with the government was reached.
The letter was the most significant effort by Benedict to balance his pastoral concerns for the up to 12 million Roman Catholics in China who are divided between an official church -- the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association -- and an underground church that is not registered with the authorities.
The Beijing government forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951, shortly after the officially atheist Chinese Communist Party took power. Worship is allowed only in the government-controlled churches.
Millions of Chinese, however, belong to unofficial congregations that remain loyal to Rome.
On several occasions, Benedict praised Catholics who resisted pressure to join the official church and paid a price for it "with the shedding of their blood."
But he urged them to forgive and reconcile with others for the sake of unifying the church.
Tellingly, Benedict referred repeatedly to the "Catholic Church in China," without distinguishing between the divisions -- an indication of his aim to see the two united and in communion with Rome.
On several occasions, he also called the Patriotic Association "incompatible with Catholic doctrine" because it named its own bishops and sought to guide the life of the church.
At the same time, however, Benedict made an unprecedented gesture, revoking 1988 guidelines issued by the Vatican's evangelization office that sought to limit contacts with the official church and declared that any bishop ordained by the official church would incur an automatic excommunication.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS