A source talked to AsiaNews about how Chinese Catholics are coping with Francis’s death. Remarks and pictures abound on local social media. “Amid the sorrow and mourning, the joy of announcing love prevailed,” as “a spontaneous explosion, not very cautious, but conscious that death and fear are not the last word.” An elderly lady and the Pope shared an “impossible dream”: she wanted to visit the Vatican, while he wanted to visit China.

Answering a journalist's question, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson praised “constructive contacts and engaged in useful exchanges” between China and the Holy See. But, in the name of sinicisation, the reference is to state-to-state relations, not the local Catholic community. The presence of Chinese bishops at Francis’s funeral is an open question.

The funeral of the PIME missionary, a pioneer of dialogue with the Church in China after Mao’s persecution, was held today. In his last book, he told the story of one of his first trips to the Chinese capital where he met with some elderly people forced to quit the religious life. They understood that he was a priest, and asked him to bless some sacred images. He was moved when he bid them goodbye.

The PIME missionary died just before his 100th birthday. He was a pioneer in establishing contact with Catholics in China after the Cultural Revolution and founder of the Holy Spirit Study Centre in Hong Kong, for decades the most documented study centre on the Catholic Church in China. Like Matteo Ricci, he followed the path of friendship and dialogue to share the Gospel of peace with the Chinese people.

Again this year the bishop who refuses to join the Patriotic Association was taken away on the eve of Holy Week. Already at Christmas he was subjected to serious retaliation for having celebrated the opening of the Jubilee in the diocese of Zhejiang, where the Beijing authorities have put a priest ‘loyal’ to the Party in leadership.

The authorities have announced “Detailed Rules” coming into effect on 1 May. Non-Chinese are asked to "respect independence and self-government" and obey the Party's instructions. Foreigners and Chinese are not allowed to take part in the same celebrations, while the number of books foreigners can bring in from abroad "for personal use" has been restricted. Extra tight control is the true face of sinicisation.

A Catholic voice from Shanghai reminds AsiaNews of the case of the auxiliary bishop who resigned from the Patriotic Association when he was ordained and has been living in seclusion ever since. It was hoped that the tormented appointment of Mgr Shen Bin as ordinary bishop would unblock the situation, but two years later nothing has happened. Ma Daqin remains the icon of the “suffering righteous”.

The Public Security Bureau this morning arrested the underground bishop of Wenzhou (Zhejiang) after he refused to pay a 200,000 fine for celebrating Mass on 27 December before 200 people. Last week he wrote to the faithful asking them to attend Mass more often and pray the rosary for Pope Francis’s health.

The gesture took place a few days ago during a visit to Shanghai by a delegation from the diocese of Hong Kong. Card. Chow said: ‘The shrine of Our Lady of Sheshan is of immense importance for the Church in China and it was significant to pray alongside Bishop Shen for the Holy Father’. The hope for closer pastoral collaboration between the ecclesial communities of the two cosmopolitan metropolises.

The authorities have imposed a 200,000 yuan fine on the prelate and threaten to demolish his "illegal” building for refusing to join official bodies and celebrating Mass with 200 worshippers. At Christmas he wrote to the faithful of the diocese inviting them to live the Jubilee of Hope in communion with the universal Church.

Rev Anthony Ji Weizhong, 51, took office today as head of a diocese with a new name and canonical boundaries, replacing lieu Fenyang, which had been established by Pius XII. Pope Francis approved the appointment on 28 October. Fujian is also in the news this week.

Ordained a priest in 1947, the Verbite clergyman passed away at almost 105 after a very long ministry that included 25 years in prison. For Bishop Lu Peisen of Yanzhou, “Fr Guo dedicated his entire life to writing a wonderful story of selflessness and love, using his life as a pen and time as ink.”

The series of conferences refocused on the council held in 1924 at the initiative of then Apostolic Delegate Card Celso Costantini, at Fu Jen Catholic University, which was established the following year as one of the fruits of that historic event for the Church in China. Even today in Taiwan the theme of inculturation and interfaith dialogue is freely pursued, moved for ecclesial and missionary purposes.

Originally from Shanghai, he passed away at the age of 91. He was imprisoned in the 1955 with other Catholics as well as five of his brothers. Their mother visited each in different prisons, bringing them support in the faith. Once he was freed, he resumed his novitiate with the Jesuits, and was ordained in 1994. Speaking to Mondo e Missione that year, he said: "There is joy and peace in my heart” because “I too know that I have done nothing against God or against my country”.

​From Mindong, Hong Kong and Taiwan to Milan’s Chinese community, various voices speak at a meeting sponsored by AsiaNews on the feast day of Saint Francis Xavier, grateful to the communities that have kept and passed on the faith amid many difficulties and new encounters, with questions about meaning in a changing world.

Yesterday Rome's Gregorian University hosted a conference on the great Jesuit missionary's legacy of ‘friendship, dialogue and peace’. Cardinal Parolin stressed the ‘continuity and specificity’ of the last three popes in the relationship between Beijing and Ricci. For Fr Lombardi, he embodied the model of inculturation. The mission is a grain sown in an endless field.

Archbishop Li Shan led the ceremony in the Cathedral of the Saviour. Pope Francis approved the appointment on 28 August. The new prelate chose as his motto “All this I do for the sake of the gospel”. No official reason was given for the appointment of a prelate with the right of succession to the current pastor of the diocese of Beijing who is only 59 years old.

Th, Fr Gianni Criveller, editorial director of AsiaNews, made the comment following the renewal of the Agreement between the Vatican and Beijing on episcopal appointments. Given the lowkey with which the renewal was announced suggests awareness that background problems remain serious. “After the 2023 crisis, China avoided taking things too far,” and today the climate seems to have improved; hence, “giving up on the narrow path of dialogue and scrapping the agreement would not bring any advantage.”

The agreement has been officially extended until October 2028, ten years since the first signing. The duration is extended but the text remains provisional and secret, while a third of China’s dioceses are still vacant. As AsiaNews reported, the ordination of a coadjutor bishop for the diocese of Beijing is set for 25 October.

Set for Friday, 25 October, the ordination in the Chinese capital becomes the first appointment (in agreement with Rome) after the renewal of the Agreement on episcopal appointments, expected in the coming days. The new prelate is 54 years old, just five years younger than Archbishop Li Shan, who has led the Church in Beijing since 2007. As a seminarian, Zhen Xuebin trained at St. John's University in the United States, where he studied Vatican II.

On 1 October, China’s foremost patriotic observance, the Diocese of Hohhot in Inner Mongolia also marked the 150th anniversary of the arrival of Scheut missionaries in the area. Beyond any anti-imperialist rhetoric, a Church that loved China and its people goes way back before 1949.

The list of participants in the second session of the Synod, released today by the Vatican, includes Bishop Vincenzo Zhan Silu, one of the bishops whose excommunication was lifted in 2018. He will work alongside Archbishop Joseph Yang Yongqiang, who already participated in the first session last year. His diocese in Fujian saw the painful resignation of "underground" Bishop Guo Xijin.

In the latest development of the Agreement between China and the Holy See, authortities recognise the ‘underground’ prelate long under arrest for refusing to join the Patriotic Association as leader of the local Catholic community. Archbishop Celli had met him two years ago and presented him with a pectoral cross in the name of Francis. Today's ceremony was held in a hotel and not in the cathedral to reaffirm aappointment's civil rather than canonical character.

The pandemic and the outbreak of dramatic conflicts have changed many things, in the world as well as in China. The generation of boys and girls born after the turn of the millennium, are among those most affected by these events. Young Chinese, believers or not, resemble more their peers from other nations with whom they share the digital and social media worlds, rather than their compatriots from the generations that preceded them.

In the diocese where 'underground' bishop Msgr. Shao is under arrest, an 'official' priest challenges the redesigning of parishes decided by the Party-linked priest who de facto rules the local church: 'Only a bishop can do that.' The gesture after police on Aug. 11 prevented him from celebrating Mass in a church left without pastoral care.

In Shanxi, a court president illegally keeps three Protestant leaders in prison without trial. But the law can also be used to show that religious freedom conforms with the law, this according to Feng Xuewei, a legal expert who worked on China’s entry in the WTO.

The debate at the event promoted at the University of St Joseph on the occasion of the centenary of the Council of Shanghai. Leopold Leeb: In many Chinese there is interest in the newness of the Gospel and this is the precondition for any inculturation. The decisive role of the "sensum fidelium" of Chinese Catholic families in keeping the faith alive in the years of persecution.

A hundred scholars from “greater China" met at the University of Saint Joseph to share thoughts from an ecclesial perspective. Archbishop Savio Hon praised the encounter with the local culture, which owes a lot to the work of Card Celso Costantini a century ago. Prof Wang Meixiu expressed concerns over today's restrictions on the access of children and minors to places of worship. She wonders whether the “number of Catholics is decreasing”.

Joseph Yang Yongqiang, 54, served as bishop in Zhoucun, Shandong. He is one of two Chinese prelates who participated in the Synod last October. He is slated to occupy an historically important see for the Church in China, where the last bishop was chosen following a row in 2000. Zheijang is the same province where the authorities do not recognise and persecute Bishop Shao Zumin.

At the general audience the Pope paid homage to China by greeting the Association of Friends of Card. Celso Costantini, builder of bridges between East and West. A thought also for the Refugee Day that the UN will celebrate tomorrow: "States should work to offer humane conditions and integration". The catechesis dedicated to the psalms: "There is no state of mind that does not find in them the best words to transform them into prayer". 

The former apostolic administrator of Kunming and two other dioceses passed away; he was in his nineties. He was seminarian in 1949 when the Communists took over, and had to wait until 1995 to be ordained a priest after spending many years in prison and working in a factory. Highly respected by all, he “led a simple and hard life.”

The election during the 2024 general assembly which took place in Lima, Peru. He succeeds Irish priest Fr. Tim Mulroy and will remain in office for the next six years. A priest since 2009, he has carried out his ministry in Taiwan and also in China and the Philippines. Founded in 1918, today they are present in 15 countries.

A community in Jiangxi wanted images of the Irish priests who served it between the 1920s and 1950s to appear on the stained glass windows in the renovation of its parish restored after long being a kindergarten. Including a martyr killed by Communist militias, whose grave is still a place revered by local Catholics.

The bishop penned his thoughts about the "sensitive” date, which is taboo in Hong Kong, in an article published yesterday by the diocesan weekly Sunday Examiner. In it, the bishop remembers the “life sapping event that took place 35 years ago” in Beijing on 4 June 1989. Although impossible to forget, he suggests to look at it through the eyes of “God’s unconditional love” who forgives even those who “are not yet courageous enough to ask for it.

The bishop of Shanghai is in Rome for the conference marking the centennial of the first meeting of all Chinese bishops. The Church is one, but its development in China must "be in line" with the "great rebirth of the Chinese nation”. Communion with the pontiff is “the best guarantee of a faith freed from external political interests,” said Card Parolin. “There may be misunderstandings, but [they are] never half-hearted with respect to the Church's journey in China.”

In a video message to a conference being held in Rome at the Urbaniana University with participants from the People's Republic of China the history and present of the Church in China on the centenary of the Shanghai Council. ‘Those who follow Jesus love peace, and stand together with all those who work for peace’.

Sources told AsiaNews that two members of the underground Catholic community in Hebei have not been heard from for days, raising serious concern. It is thought that, like in other cases, they have been subjected to restrictive measures by local authorities. The diocese is the same where, a century ago, the Council of Shanghai pushed for the Marian shrine in Donglu. At present, pressure remains very strong on communities that refuse to join the various bodies of China’s “official” Church.

A year after his first historic visit to Beijing, the cardinal and a group of aides held meetings in local churches in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, two metropolises in southern China on, like Hong Kong, the Pearl River Delta. He also encouraged meetings among the laity to feel “that we belong to one family”.