The Catholic Church must respect “with a capital R” China’s rich traditional culture and “age-old” wisdom, Pope Francis has said. Dialogue between China and the rest of the world, including the Church, is necessary because it is the only way to achieve peace, he said. “Dialogue does not mean that we end up with a compromise, half the cake for you and the other half for me. No, dialogue means: ‘Look, we have got to this point, I may or may not agree, but let us walk together.’ This is what it means to build,” he said in a lengthy interview with Asia Times.
The interview took place at the Vatican with Francesco Sisci, an Italian correspondent and academic based in China. The Pope also gave his “best wishes and greetings to President Xi Jinping and to all the Chinese people” for Chinese New Year. He said: “I wish to express my hope that they never lose their historical awareness of being a great people, with a great history of wisdom, and that they have much to offer to the world.”
The Pope said he had admired China ever since he was a boy and saw it as “a reference point of greatness” and as a country and culture “with inexhaustible wisdom”. In fact, he said he became “very emotional, something that does not usually happen to me,” when he was told he was about to fly over Chinese airspace in 2014, and he sent a papal greeting to Mr Xi on the way to South Korea. When asked about the one-child policy introduced in China in 1980, the Pope said its impact was not “natural”. “The problem for China of not having children must be very painful … A child has to bear the burden of his father, mother, grandfather and grandmother … It is not the natural way,” he said.
Turkey reinstates its Vatican ambassador after a year away
Turkey has reinstated its ambassador to the Holy See nearly a year after recalling him to Ankara. The diplomat had been called back to Turkey “for consultations” last April on the day that Pope Francis used the term “genocide” in reference to the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians during their forced evacuation by Ottoman Turks in 1915-18. Turkey rejects accusations of genocide and disputes the number of Armenians who died.
The Pope’s remarks to Armenian Christians gathered in St Peter’s Basilica, including Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan, came ahead of a Mass commemorating the 100th anniversary of the genocide. The Pope lamented the forced expulsions and atrocious killings of Christians in the world in his brief address. He said humanity had lived through “three massive and unprecedented tragedies the past century: the first, which is generally considered the first genocide of the 20th century” had struck the Armenian people. He also quoted a joint declaration signed in 2001 by St John Paul and Armenian patriarch Catholicos Karekin II of Etchmiadzin.
First ordinariate bishop installed
The world’s ordinariates gained their first bishop last week as Bishop Steven Lopes was installed as leader of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter in North America. Bishop Lopes, a former official at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, thanked Benedict XVI for his “vision of unity” and Pope Francis for putting it into action.
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