Catholic Church China

The last time Pope John Paul II secretly named someone to the College of Cardinals was in 1979, when he chose Chinese Bishop Ignatius Kung, imprisoned by the Chinese authorities for more than 30 years because he refused to break ties with Rome. When the appointment was finally revealed 12 years later--after former Shanghai Bishop Kung was safely in the United States--the enraged Chinese reacted by arresting Kung's successor as Shanghai bishop, Fan Zhongliang.

Archbishop Anthony Li Duan, an important figure in China's divided Catholic Church, died Thursday in the western city of Xian after a two-year battle with liver cancer, an official with China's state-approved church said. Li was 79. Li, head of the Xian Diocese, played a major role in the church's rebirth after severe persecution during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

Evangelist Billy Graham was at the pulpit of the Chongwenmen Church on Sunday morning, delivering his first sermon in China, when a sudden worry struck him. Perhaps some members of the mostly Chinese congregation in this dry and dusty city might be unfamiliar with frogs, the subject of the anecdote he was about to deliver. "I hope you have frogs here," he said, a bit of concern and uncertainty creeping into his normally confident voice.

Pope John Paul II added the first Chinese to the roll of saints Sunday, declaring 120 Chinese Catholics and foreign missionaries to be martyrs in the church's 5-century-long--and ongoing--struggle in China. China's state-run church bitterly protested the canonization of the 87 Chinese and 33 foreign missionaries as a "public humiliation." The canonization fell on China's National Day celebrating the 51st anniversary of Communist rule.

China has granted early release to an aging Roman Catholic bishop whose freedom had been called for by the United States, a U.S. official said Sunday. The release Saturday of Zeng Jingmu came little more than a month before President Clinton is scheduled to travel to China for a visit highlighting improved ties. Zeng, in his late 70s, had been on a list of people that the State Department has called on China to release, said the official with the U.S.

Bishop Ignatius Gong, 87, former Roman Catholic bishop of Shanghai who was jailed for 30 years on charges of high treason before being freed on parole in 1985, has had his political rights restored by the Shanghai Higher People's Court, the New China News Agency said. The prelate was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1955 on charges of high treason when he refused to join a movement severing ties between China's Catholic Church and the Vatican.

John Paul II, who has traveled farther and tried harder to broaden the Roman Catholic Church's international contacts than any Pope before him, is "one for two" in his patient attempts to win a thaw in Vatican relations with the Communist giants. President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's new-look Soviets and their allies in East Europe seem willing to meet the Pope halfway. Paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's Chinese are not at all interested.

Making his first statement to the outside world after nearly 30 years in prison and more than two years on parole, Shanghai's former Roman Catholic bishop, Ignatius Gong, said Saturday that he remains loyal to the Vatican. The best known of hundreds of priests who were persecuted by the Communists in the 1950s, Gong became a symbol of resistance to Communist authority.

Pope John Paul II added the first Chinese to the roll of saints Sunday, declaring 120 Chinese Catholics and foreign missionaries to be martyrs in the church's 5-century-long--and ongoing--struggle in China. China's state-run church bitterly protested the canonization of the 87 Chinese and 33 foreign missionaries as a "public humiliation." The canonization fell on China's National Day celebrating the 51st anniversary of Communist rule.

Pope John Paul II on Sunday named 25 new cardinals from 18 countries, including prelates from Lithuania and Hong Kong in a move to bolster the Roman Catholic Church in the Soviet Union and in China, after it assumes control of Hong Kong in 1997. Two Americans, Archbishops James A. Hickey of Washington, D.C., and Edmund C. Szoka of Detroit, were on the list.

China has granted early release to an aging Roman Catholic bishop whose freedom had been called for by the United States, a U.S. official said Sunday. The release Saturday of Zeng Jingmu came little more than a month before President Clinton is scheduled to travel to China for a visit highlighting improved ties. Zeng, in his late 70s, had been on a list of people that the State Department has called on China to release, said the official with the U.S.

The last time Pope John Paul II secretly named someone to the College of Cardinals was in 1979, when he chose Chinese Bishop Ignatius Kung, imprisoned by the Chinese authorities for more than 30 years because he refused to break ties with Rome. When the appointment was finally revealed 12 years later--after former Shanghai Bishop Kung was safely in the United States--the enraged Chinese reacted by arresting Kung's successor as Shanghai bishop, Fan Zhongliang.

One of the Vatican's most senior trouble-shooters, a patrician 70-year-old French cardinal and perhaps an unlikely spectator at a sporting event, is on his way to Beijing today to attend China's national athletic games. That is the official story, but behind it could lie a 1990s variation on Ping-Pong diplomacy that may ease decades of enmity between China's Communist government and the Holy See.

Thousands of Chinese packed churches Christmas Eve to pray and sing joyful hymns once banned by the Communist nation, and church officials said their congregations have grown since last June's crackdown on the pro-democracy movement. Large crowds of worshipers and the merely curious jammed into Beijing's churches for evening Protestant services and midnight Mass at Catholic churches. Some services were so crowded that many worshipers were forced to wait outside in frigid weather.

John Paul II, who has traveled farther and tried harder to broaden the Roman Catholic Church's international contacts than any Pope before him, is "one for two" in his patient attempts to win a thaw in Vatican relations with the Communist giants. President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's new-look Soviets and their allies in East Europe seem willing to meet the Pope halfway. Paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's Chinese are not at all interested.

The bishop of Shanghai arrives promptly at 6:45 every morning to say Mass in Chinese at a private Stamford chapel. He is accompanied by the assistant charged with teaching him the modern ways of the Roman Catholic Church. Observers of his daily ritual say that Bishop Ignatius Kung is a quick student considering his heart condition, 30 years of imprisonment in a Shanghai jail and the fact that until recently he said Mass only in Latin.

Thousands of Chinese packed churches Christmas Eve to pray and sing joyful hymns once banned by the Communist nation, and church officials said their congregations have grown since last June's crackdown on the pro-democracy movement. Large crowds of worshipers and the merely curious jammed into Beijing's churches for evening Protestant services and midnight Mass at Catholic churches. Some services were so crowded that many worshipers were forced to wait outside in frigid weather.

The bishop of Shanghai arrives promptly at 6:45 every morning to say Mass in Chinese at a private Stamford chapel. He is accompanied by the assistant charged with teaching him the modern ways of the Roman Catholic Church. Observers of his daily ritual say that Bishop Ignatius Kung is a quick student considering his heart condition, 30 years of imprisonment in a Shanghai jail and the fact that until recently he said Mass only in Latin.

Pope John Paul II on Sunday named 25 new cardinals from 18 countries, including prelates from Lithuania and Hong Kong in a move to bolster the Roman Catholic Church in the Soviet Union and in China, after it assumes control of Hong Kong in 1997. Two Americans, Archbishops James A. Hickey of Washington, D.C., and Edmund C. Szoka of Detroit, were on the list.

Evangelist Billy Graham was at the pulpit of the Chongwenmen Church on Sunday morning, delivering his first sermon in China, when a sudden worry struck him. Perhaps some members of the mostly Chinese congregation in this dry and dusty city might be unfamiliar with frogs, the subject of the anecdote he was about to deliver. "I hope you have frogs here," he said, a bit of concern and uncertainty creeping into his normally confident voice.