ROME – The state-sanctioned Catholic church in China has seen a new bishop’s appointment made alongside the establishment of a new diocese on the mainland for the first time since Mao’s Communist revolution.
On 29 January, the Vatican confirmed that Bishop Anthony Sun Venjun, 53, had been appointed to lead the Diocese of Weifang that was created in April 2023. It marks the first formal creation of a new diocese by the Holy See in China since the Communist revolution in 1949.
“Both decisions – the erection of the new diocese and the appointment of its first pastor – took place in April 2023, but were announced on the day of the Bishop’s consecration,” reports Vatican News. “The appointment was made in the context of the Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China.”
In April 2023, the Vatican announced it had “suppressed” the apostolic prefecture of Yiduxian in China while establishing the Diocese of Weifang in a bid to “promote the pastoral care of the Lord’s flock and to attend more effectively to its spiritual good”.
Established in June 1931 by Pope Pius XI and entrusted to French Franciscan missionaries, Yiduxian became vacant in 2008 with the death of its former bishop, Joseph Sun Zhibin, who was one of five bishops ordained by Beijing without papal consent in 1988, but who eventually requested and obtained approval from Rome.
According to AsiaNews, the new borders for the Diocese of Weifang were decided on by Chinese authorities based on existing urban divisions and were accepted by the Holy See. The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) is the state-sanctioned entity that governs the “official” state-approved Catholic church in China. Currently, according to Chinese officials, there are 104 dioceses in China, excluding Macau and Hong Kong.
The creation of the Weifang diocese conforms to the state-sanctioned Chinese ecclesial structural system, which recognises only dioceses, with no metropolitan sees or apostolic prefectures.
Four days prior to the announcement about Bishop Venjun heading the Diocese of Weifang, the Vatican also announced the ordination of Bishop Thaddeus Wang Yuesheng, who previously on 16 Dec 2023 was appointed bishop of Zhengzhou in Henan province by Pope Francis according to “the framework of the Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China” agreed on in 2018.
The ordination of Yuesheng marks the first episcopal ordination in China in two years and is the first agreed-on appointment by the Vatican and China since the 2022 renewal of the 2018 provisional agreement on episcopal appointments.
Chinese authorities in recent years have made several unilateral transfers of bishops without Rome’s knowledge or consent, including the November 2022 transfer of Bishop Pen Weizhao to the diocese of Jiangxi and the April 2023 transfer of Bishop Shen Bin to Shenghai.
The last episcopal appointment made according to the terms of the agreement occurred in September 2021 when Franciscan Bishop Francis Cui Qingqi was ordained as bishop of Wuhan.
The establishment of the Diocese of Weifang on April 20, 2023, was made during the interim between China’s unauthorised transfer of Bishop Shen Bin to Shenghai on April 4, 2023, and the Pope’s subsequent approval of that transfer in July 2023.
The terms of the 2018 agreement, subsequently renewed by both sides, remain secret, and have been a source of controversy among critics who charge that it’s compelled the Pope and his Vatican team to remain mute on China’s record on human rights and religious freedom abuses.
Yuesheng, 57, had previously served as a diocesan priest in Zhengzhou, and, according to AsiaNews, is the provincial president of the CCPA in Henan and in that capacity was also the CCPA’s designated administrator for Zhengzhou. Zhengzhou has been without a bishop since Italian Xaverian missionary Faustino Tissot was exiled in 1953.
Pope Francis has gone to great lengths to build bridges with Chinese authorities since his election in 2013, and last year he made several significant gestures aimed at strengthening ties.
Following his eventual approval of the transfer of Bishop Shen Bin to Shenghai, the Pope in September 2023 spoke of the “noble Chinese people” during a trip to Mongolia, and later that month he gave a red hat to the current bishop of Hong Kong, Stephen Chow.
A Jesuit, Chow has repeatedly insisted that his vision for Hong Kong is to be a “bridge-builder” between the Vatican and China and is generally seen as a friendly figure by Chinese officials. In April 2023, Chow made a visit to Beijing that was reciprocated when Beijing Archbishop Li Shan visited Hong Kong in November.
Two state-approved Chinese bishops attended part of the Pope’s Synod of Bishops on Synodality in October 2023, and it is expected that they will return for the second edition of the gathering scheduled for October of this year.
The developments of the past week appears to signal further steps toward a full reconciliation between the Holy See and China, which has long been a desire for Vatican officials.
After the pope accepted Bishop Shen Bin’s transfer to Shenghai last year, Vatican Secretary of State Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin published an interview with Vatican News, the Vatican’s state-run information platform, voicing hope that a permanent resident papal representative to Beijing would soon be named.
Photo: A young Catholic attends a mass at the government-sanctioned St. Ignatius Catholic Cathedral in Shanghai, China, 30 September 2018. (Photo by JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images.)
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