In 2017, Bishop Guo Xijin of Mindong in China’s Fujian province disappeared. At that time, he was pressured to sign a document stating his willingness to “voluntarily” be demoted to coadjutor bishop as a condition that he be recognized by the government during his one-month detention. This would have been bad enough. But in 2018, Pope Francis…
Dear friends and enemies … we are publishing a letter that Cardinal Joseph Zen sent some time ago to all the cardinals, and that he has now decided to make public. Needless to say, the latest news coming from mainland China only confirms and augments the concerns expressed for some time by many people about…
It is never a good idea to sign a deal just for the sake of signing a deal The Vatican is set to sign an agreement with China by the end of the month, one that cedes control over the appointment of bishops to Beijing. In return, we are told, Beijing has agreed to recognize…
Image: Liao Yiwu by Elke Wetzig (Elya), Liao Yiwu 2010 Cologne, CC BY-SA 3.0 A Chinese dissident and author who was imprisoned by Chinese Communists for four years has warned the Catholic Church about making a “deal with the devil” as regards its negotiations with Beijing. Not a Christian himself, he nevertheless supports Cardinal Joseph Zen in…
Population Research Institute President and China Expert Steven Mosher went to Rome to warn the Vatican that under the rapidly growing power and religious persecution of the Jinping regime, any agreement between the Vatican and Beijing would be seen by Chinese believers as nothing short of a rank betrayal.
The decision means that the proposed Vatican-China agreement would not merely be a surrender of the Chinese faithful to the Communist Party—it would be an utter betrayal of the faith. On March 22, the Chinese Communist Party announced that all “religious affairs” in China would henceforth be supervised by a shadowy Party office called the…
On Saturday, 7 April 2018, two important events took place which seemed, to a superficial observer, to be utterly unrelated: In Rome, people gathered and discussed the topic “Catholic Church, where are you going?” Present were prominent prelates such as Cardinal Raymond Burke, Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, and Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider. It was about the…
Not long after I became Catholic in the early nineties, I traveled to China to learn more about the fate of my fellow believers under communism. They were divided into two opposing camps, or so I believed at the time, with some belonging to the state-controlled church – the so-called Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association –…
On January 31, 2018, Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin gave an extensive interview to Vatican Insider in which he explains the reasons the Holy See wishes to engage the Chinese Patriotic Church in “constructive dialogue.” Of course Parolin assures everyone that the only motive of the Holy See in this matter is “the good…
A new statement from the Holy See Press Office today indicates that despite assertions to the contrary from an outspoken Chinese cardinal, Pope Francis is fully aware and approves of recent diplomatic steps taken by the Vatican to appease the Chinese government. Yesterday, we reported that Cardinal Joseph Zen, Bishop-Emeritus of Hong Kong, had released…
Cardinal Joseph Zen sets the record straight about his meeting with the pope and what is happening in China with the Sino-Vatican compromise.
