The Vatican made one other big overture to China on Tuesday, reaffirming it poses no threat to Beijing’s sovereignty and admitting that Catholic Western missionaries had made “errors” in past centuries of their zeal to convert the Chinese faithful.
The Vatican hosted the top of China’s bishops conference to an unprecedented, high-level commemoration of a landmark 1924 meeting that affirmed the necessity for foreign missionaries in China to present strategy to local leaders of the Catholic Church.
The presence of Shanghai Bishop Joseph Shen Bin alongside the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, on the Pontifical Urbaniana University was in itself noteworthy. It marked the primary time in memory that a mainland bishop has been allowed by Beijing to take part in a public Vatican event because the keynote speaker.
It was also significant given the controversy over Shen’s 2023 appointment. Pope Francis in July was forced to acknowledge China’s unilateral appointment of Shen as bishop of Shanghai. The appointment seemingly violated the Holy See’s 2018 accord with Beijing over bishop appointments.
Francis opened the conference with a video message during which he made no mention of recent troubles but as a substitute pointed to the 1924 meeting in Shanghai as a turning point for Vatican-China relations. The first and only Chinese church council, he said, recognized that the church in China must “increasingly have a Chinese face.”
“But the Council of Shanghai didn’t only serve to forget the erroneous approaches that had prevailed in previous times,” Francis said. “The participants of the primary Chinese Council looked to the longer term. And their future is our present.”
It was a reference to the French, Italian and other Western missionary religious orders that evangelized China over the centuries but refused to cede leadership authority to local Chinese clergy. Their attitudes helped fuel the anti-Western and anti-Christian sentiment behind the Boxer Rebellion, which aimed to rid China of foreign influences.
The Vatican has been working for years to try to enhance relations with China that were officially severed over seven many years ago when the Communists got here to power. The aim is to unite the country’s estimated 12 million Catholics, who were divided into an official, state-recognized church and an underground church that stayed loyal to Rome.
Relations had long been stymied over China’s insistence on its exclusive right to call bishops as a matter of national sovereignty, while the Vatican insisted on the pope’s exclusive right to call the successors of the unique Apostles.
The 2018 deal sought to search out a middle ground, though the Vatican has flagged repeated violations and Rome has acknowledged it was a foul deal however the just one it could get. It was signed at a time during which China was tightening controls on all religions, especially Christianity and Islam, that are viewed as foreign imports and potential challengers to Communist authority.
