China-Vatican: New Joint Ordination of Bishop ( Possible Thaw in Relations)

AKI ^ | 28 July 2005 | Staff

[Our_Man_In_Gough_Island]

Vatican City, 28 July (AKI) - A new bishop has been appointed to the archdiocese of Xian, in central China, with the reported agreement of both the Vatican and the Chinese government, accoridng to the Vatican-linked AsiaNews service. In a report Thursday, AsiaNews noted that the ordination of Monsignor Anthony Dan Mingyan, 38, follows a first 'joint' appointment of a bishop in Shanghai in June. It is the latest sign of an apparent thaw in relations between the Vatican and Beijing, which refuses to let Chinese Catholics recognise the authority of the Pope and operates its own Patriotce Catholic Association. AsiaNews sources confirm that this episcopal ordination - like that in Shanghai last month - also took place with the approval of the Holy See and with the consent of the Chinese government. It reported that some 2,000 Catholics, more than 100 priests and several high-ranking government officials attended the ceremony, which was held at St Francis Cathedral in Beijing.

Bishop Dang was born to a Catholic family - the eighth of nine children- and was ordained a priest in 1991, AsiaNews reports. It said Monsignor Dang had indicated that one of his main tasks will be to motivate priests and laymen to evangelise.

[JohnnyZ]

Impossible to tell what's really going on in this sort of situation.

The "Patriotic" Church, the Underground Church, and the overlap between them, make for a very muddled situation.

[JohnnyZ]

In other news ....

Police have detained a priest in China's unofficial Roman Catholic church and beat parishioners who tried to prevent him from being taken away, a U.S. monitoring group said Friday.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1453249/posts

[Our_Man_In_Gough_Island]

This is simply how China does business - two steps forward, one step back. This is ***not*** a Western-style context for negotiations. After the last China-Vatican approved bishop was installed, China actually publicly denied they had endorsed the bishop. We need to remember we are looking at a culture in which policy decisions are reached in a very different manner from our own.