HONG KONG, Oct. 4, 00 (CWNews.com) - The auxiliary bishop of Hong Kong said on Wednesday that China's Communist government pressured the archdiocese to approach the recent canonization of Chinese martyrs in a "low-key manner."
Bishop Joseph Zen, writing in the Ming Pao newspaper, said the government had tried to meddle in Hong Kong's celebrations of Pope John Paul II's canonization of the first 87 Chinese saints on Sunday. "The Liaison Office urged the Hong Kong diocese to handle the canonization in a low-key manner," he wrote. The Liaison Office is the former Hong Kong branch of the official Xinhua news agency and is now Beijing's chief representative office in the semi-autonomous territory.
"That puts us in a quandary. What are the measures for 'high', 'low'?" Bishop Zen wrote in the article. He said the celebrations went as planned in Hong Kong churches over the weekend. Communist Beijing has promised to keep a light hand in running Hong Kong, the foremost capitalist enclave in Asia, following the handover from Britain in 1997, including allowing relatively expansive religious freedom.
The Communist Chinese government requires Christians on the mainland to worship only in state-controlled associations including the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which eschews any connections to the Vatican or the Pope. Many Catholics worship in illegal, underground churches following only bishops appointed by the Pope.
China's reaction to the canonizations, which fell on October 1, China's National Day, was unprecedented, saying chances for any improvement in relations with the Vatican were destroyed and characterizing the mainly 19th and early 20th century saints as pawns of Western imperialists.
Bishop Zen rejected what he called Beijing's "violent suppression" of both the state-controlled and underground churches in China recently. "What hurts the feelings of countless Chinese citizens and peace-loving people all over the world is the violent suppression by central authorities of churches in the country," he wrote.
"It leads one to recall some of the campaigns in the early years of the People's Republic of China, even the Cultural Revolution," Bishop Zen said, referring to Mao Zedong's campaign of political persecution from 1966 to 1976. He said the Liaison Office had tried to prevent him from communicating with his brother bishops across the border in China after he spoke briefly with one bishop on the mainland. "The telephone call brought a warning from the Liaison Office that 'Beijing is very dissatisfied with you'," he wrote.
CWN - Catholic World News