Vatican ready to dump Taiwan

Richard Owen, Rome
October 31, 2005
THE Vatican is preparing to break its ties with Taiwan and establish diplomatic relations with mainland China, ending more than 50 years of mutual hostility with Beijing.

A Vatican official said a leading spokesman, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, was sending a deliberate signal when he said the Vatican was ready to move its nuncio (ambassador) from Taiwan to Beijing immediately.

And Taiwanese officials said they expect the Vatican to establish relations with Beijing within 18 months.

The shift follows signs that Beijing is tacitly accepting the Pope's right to approve, if not appoint, bishops in China.

Cardinal Sodano, speaking at a conference, said that in return for the Vatican cutting its links with Taiwan, China would have to respect religious freedom.

"It's not a question of whether the Vatican will reach a deal with Beijing but when," a Vatican source said.

Beijing said it welcomed better relations but would not tolerate the Vatican meddling in its internal affairs.

However, Chinese officials hedged the question of whether Beijing would regard the Vatican appointing Chinese bishops as interference in its internal affairs, saying only that it respected religious freedom.

China and the Vatican have not had diplomatic ties since 1951, two years after the communists took power. Rome recognised Taiwan, which still maintains an embassy to the Holy See.

Officially, Catholics in China can attend only the state-sanctioned churches of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which is led by bishops loyal to and appointed by Beijing.

However, there is a much larger underground church loyal to the Pope with 8 million members, double the official church. Beijing has repeatedly persecuted its leaders.

Four Chinese bishops were not allowed to attend the Synod of Bishops in Rome this month, the first held under Pope Benedict, and he ordered four chairs to be left empty, labelled with their names. But in August, the Pope quietly received 28 Patriotic Church clerics at the Vatican.

This month La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal whose contents are vetted by Cardinal Sodano's office, carried an article by Father Hans Waldenfels, a Jesuit priest who knows China well, in which he wrote that there were "signs of a future understanding" between China and the Vatican, including a "tacit deal" on the nomination of bishops.

He said bishops appointed by Beijing were now seeking approval from Rome before being consecrated.

At the Synod, Monsignor Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun, the archbishop of Hong Kong, said congregations and clergy in China were refusing to accept bishops not approved by the Pope.

The trend began in June, when Joseph Xing Wenzhi was installed as auxiliary bishop of the Patriotic Church in Shanghai, with the Pope's approval.

"Everybody knew about it," Aloysius Jin Luxian, the official Bishop of Shanghai, told the Catholic magazine 30 Days, and he added: "Rome specifically requested that I should be the consecrating bishop."

A process of reconciliation is also under way in the city of Xian.

Father Bernardo Cervellera, an Italian missionary priest who has served in China, said the Synod showed the shift. "Never before has the Chinese church been so much at the heart of the church as whole."

He said the official and underground churches were overlapping, and that the Vatican had so far approved 49 of the 79 government-sanctioned bishops.

The Times


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