Hong Kong, China - China installed a new bishop today over the objections of the Vatican, prompting Cardinal Joseph Zen, the Roman Catholic bishop of Hong Kong, to issue a blistering statement accusing mainland authorities of having threatened and kidnapped mainland clergy to make them participate in the ritual.
Cardinal Zen said late tonight that the ordination by the government-controlled church whose allegiance to the Vatican has been superseded was more serious than China’s consecration of two bishops last spring over the Vatican’s protests. The Holy See had specifically warned the Chinese government then against any further unapproved ordinations of bishops.
The Vatican raised the prospect at that time of excommunicating Chinese priests who allowed themselves to be consecrated as bishops in defiance of Rome, although the Vatican has not done so.
Cardinal Zen, who has been granted considerable discretion by Pope Benedict XVI to speak out on issues involving the church on the mainland, also disclosed today the existence of a secret delegation from the Vatican to Beijing after the ordinations last spring. The cardinal said that the Chinese government had invited the delegation and had promised that it would not conduct any more ordinations without the Vatican’s approval.
Hours before Cardinal Zen issued his statement, Jiang Yu, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, held a news briefing in Beijing at which he urged the Vatican to view the consecration favorably. “We hope the Vatican side can take the history of China-Vatican relations and the current situation of the Chinese church into full account,” he said. Chinese officials were not available for comment after Cardinal Zen made his statement.
Pope Benedict is in Turkey and is not expected to issue a separate response to the Chinese action immediately.
Cardinal Zen was protesting the installation of Wang Renlei, the vicar general of the Xuzhou Diocese in Jiangsu Province in eastern China, as the auxiliary bishop of the diocese. Mr. Wang is only 36 years old, meaning that he could serve as a bishop for decades to come; the bishop of the province is 94.
Chinese officials described the selection of Mr. Wang as having been made democratically within the diocese.
The Vatican has been particularly hostile to the ordination of young bishops by government-approved Catholic churches. Negotiations between China and the Vatican over a possible normalization of diplomatic relations and the possibility of a transfer of the papal nuncio from Taipei to Beijing have run into particular difficulty over the question of which bishops should run dioceses: those from the government-sanctioned churches or those from underground churches loyal to the Vatican.
Cardinal Zen made a series of thinly veiled comments suggesting that the ordination was the work of China’s religious affairs officials, who administer the government-approved churches, and appealed in his statement for China’s leaders to intervene. The religious affairs officials are believed to have led opposition within the government to letting the Vatican have more influence over the management of dioceses and seminaries.
“It is hard to understand how there can be people who obstinately work for destruction,” Cardinal Zen said in his statement. “Under the cloak of serving the church, they work to destroy her unity.”
Cardinal Zen also made the accusation that, “in order to achieve their purpose the methods they used this time are not only threat, allurement and deceit but also forceful abduction and kidnapping!”
His statement tonight had two exclamation marks, unusual for a Catholic Church document. The cardinal has a history of strong remarks about China, but has retained the support of Pope Benedict and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. He has extensive contacts on the mainland after teaching in a series of mainland seminaries in the early 1990’s.