HK bishop: Vatican willing to give up Taiwan for China

Diplomatic efforts are hampered by Beijing's refusal to let the Holy See intervene in Chinese Church affairs

HONGKONG'S outspoken Bishop Joseph Zen said yesterday that the stumbling block to diplomatic recognition between Beijing and the Vatican was what Beijing would allow the Holy See to do in China rather than the question of Taiwan.

Bishop Zen, who became the head of the Catholic Church in Hongkong last year, said: 'The Vatican has made it clear that it is ready for a compromise, ready to renounce diplomatic relations with Taiwan. So, that is not going to be a problem.'

He cited the right to appoint Chinese bishops as a major area of contention between Beijing and the Vatican.

He said that the Vatican needed to have diplomatic ties with Beijing to help the many Catholics on the mainland, estimated to number 10 million.

'The bishops in Taiwan understand. We don't know if all the priests, or the faithful, understand,' he said, adding that some people had questioned why the Vatican was ready to abandon followers in Taiwan to get close to the mainland.

'The chief problem is the Chinese communists insist on one condition, that is, the Holy See should not interfere in the Chinese Church affairs, including the appointment of bishops, the delimitation of dioceses, the establishment of seminaries and religious congregations, and other internal affairs of the Church.

'As for the issue of Taiwan, it is not the most principal problem,' Cardinal Shan had said.

Beijing, which accuses the Church of conducting political activity on the mainland in the guise of religion, insists on the right to appoint bishops, has set up a shadow Catholic Church called the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, and forbids ties with Rome.

Beijing cut diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1951. The rift between the two sides widened in recent years.

In 2000, Rome canonised 120 Catholic martyrs, some of whom were considered to be traitors by the Chinese government.

In 2001, Beijing consecrated several Chinese bishops in defiance of the Vatican.

Bishop Zen, who was speaking at a luncheon organised by the Foreign Correspondents' Club yesterday, attributed speculation in recent years that the Vatican was on the verge of establishing ties with Beijing to comments made in 1999 by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State.

The cardinal had said that the papal diplomatic office in Taiwan could be moved to Beijing immediately if the communist authorities gave the nod.

'This gave the illusion that the Vatican was ready to surrender,' Bishop Zen said, adding that Beijing lost interest when it realised later that the Vatican meant only to negotiate.

He said that despite changes in the last 20 years on the mainland with new churches built and seminaries filled with students, the situation facing the Church was very bad.

'The government is using more repressive measures towards the Catholic Church,' he said, adding the authorities were nervous because it was an open secret that two-thirds of the bishops of the official Church were reconciled to the Holy See.

'The young priests are not as obedient to the government as the old priests,' he said.

He cited two mainland seminaries which have been barred from receiving anyone to teach on their premises in the last two years.

'All this is against the general climate,' he said, noting that China was opening up following its entry to the World Trade Organisation and Beijing's plans to stage the 2008 Olympics.

He said the situation could improve under Mr Hu Jintao, who became the head of the Communist Party last November.

In his speech, Bishop Zen, a vocal critic of Hongkong's proposed national security law, repeated his belief that the legislation could be detrimental to the Church in Hongkong because it allows the authorities to restrict an organisation in the territory that is subordinate to outlawed mainland bodies.

'Suppose tomorrow, in China, they say that the underground Catholic Church is an illegal organisation, and I was a vice-president of a conference organised by the Church, we'd be proscribed in Hongkong.'

The Vatican is going to give up Free China for the Enslaved China with 80 million underground Catholics and Christians. That is just wonderful. Maybe the Pope and Catholics need to read the following story of one woman in her stand against Evil.

I hope that you Catholics out there will write your priests and Rome to register your outrage.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/11/27/1038386200865.html
Tortured Chinese refuse to renounce God
November 28 2002

Communist secret police use extreme cruelty on suspects whose only crime is their faith, writes Nicholas Kristof.

She never broke, despite the beatings and electrical shocks, and even when she was close to death she refused to disclose the names of members of her congregation or sign a statement renouncing her Christian faith.

But now, months later, Ma Yuqin abruptly chokes and her eyes well with tears as she recounts her worst memory. As she was being battered in one room, her son was tortured in the next so that each could hear the other's screams, as encouragement to betray their church.

"They wanted me to hear his cries," she said, sobbing. "It broke my heart."

Ma, a steel-willed woman of 54, was brave enough to tell her story of the persecution that Christians sometimes still face in China. Dozens of members of her church are still imprisoned, and the rest are under tight scrutiny, but several church members dared to meet me for a tense interview after we all sneaked, one by one, into an unwatched farmhouse near Zhongxiang, in central China.

China is in many ways freer than it has ever been, and it's easy to be dazzled by the mobile phones and skyscrapers. But alongside all that sparkle is the old police state. Particularly in remote areas such as this, police can arrest people and torture or kill them with impunity, even if they are trying to do nothing more than worship God. Accordingly, the West must press China hard to observe not only international trade rules, but also international standards for human freedom.

Secret Communist Party documents just published in a book, China's New Rulers, underscore the grip of the police. The party documents say approvingly that 60,000 Chinese were killed, either executed or shot by police while fleeing, between 1998 and 2001. That amounts to 15,000 a year, which suggests that 97 per cent of the world's executions take place in China. And it is well documented that scores of Christians and members of the Falun Gong sect have died in police custody.

In some parts of China Christians worship completely freely. But in other areas the authorities brutally crush the independent churches, and that is what happened to the South China Church, an evangelical congregation.

Ma said she and her family were sleeping one night in May, 2001, when police burst into her house and arrested her, her son and her daughter-in-law. The police left her five-year-old grandson alone with nobody to take care of him.

A friend and fellow Christian named Yu Zhongju, 27, who dropped by the house was promptly arrested as well. Yu died in custody, and one can surmise that she was beaten to death.

According to interviews with church members and statements smuggled out of prison, dozens of church members were arrested at the same time and were beaten with clubs, jolted with cattle prods and burnt with cigarettes; when they fainted, buckets of water were used to revive them. Interrogators stomped on the fingers of male prisoners and stripped young women prisoners naked and abused them. "They used the electrical prods on me all over," Ma said, fighting back the tears again. "They wanted to humiliate us."

The government initially sentenced five church members to death. Ma herself was released because she was so sick that the authorities feared she would die in prison, but her son, Long Feng, was sent to a labour camp, where the guards told criminals to beat him up.

One of the ironies of Christianity in China is that in the first half of the 20th century, thousands of missionaries preached freely but left a negligible imprint. Yet now, with foreign missionaries banned and the underground church persecuted, Christianity is flourishing in China with tens of millions of believers.

To his credit, US President George Bush has emphasised the issue of religious freedom in China, and there is progress. Last month a court overturned the death sentences of the South China Church leaders, replacing them with long prison terms. Increasingly, a historic change is visible; the citizens of China are becoming less afraid of the government than it is of them.

I had assumed that Ma, like all the other church members I interviewed, would not want her name published. "No," she said firmly, "use my name. I'm not afraid. The police are afraid of foreign pressure, but I'm not afraid of them."

Pulitzer prize-winner Nicholas Kristof is a columnist for The New York Times, where this article first appeared.

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