Vatican calls on Chinese bishops to affirm loyalty to Pope

VATICAN CITY—The Vatican condemned China Thursday for restraining Chinese Catholics and called on the country’s bishops to clarify their position by reaffirming loyalty to the pope.

“We noted the general climate of disorientation and anxiety about the future,” the Holy See said in a message to Chinese Catholics after a meeting of the Vatican’s Chinese commission this week.

A statement said the Catholic community in China was marked by internal divisions, a lack of priests and subject to “pressures and restraints” from authorities.

The 5.7 million-odd Catholics in China are caught between staying loyal to the ruling Communist Party in Beijing and showing allegiance to the pope in Rome as part of an “underground” Church not recognized by the authorities.

Beijing and the Vatican have been at loggerheads since China severed ties with the Holy See in 1951. The atmosphere worsened when in 1957 China set up its own Catholic Church administered by the atheist Communist government.

The “illegal” ordination of a bishop in Chengde last November – without the pope’s blessing – was strongly condemned by the Vatican.

“On the basis of the information and testimonies it has so far received, (the Holy See) – while having no reason to consider it invalid – does regard it as gravely illegitimate,” the Chinese commission said about the ordination.

Bishops who had been appointed by the Chinese authorities could not be automatically excommunicated, the Vatican said, as they may have been victims of external “pressures and restraints”.

“Every bishop involved is therefore obliged to refer to the Holy See and find the means of explaining his position to the priests and faithful, renewing his loyalty to the Supreme Pontiff,” the statement said.

This would help bishops to “overcome their interior suffering and repair the external scandal caused,” it added.

About 15 million Protestants and five million Catholics worship at official churches in China, according to recent official Chinese data.

But more than 50 million others are believed to pray at “underground” or “house” churches, which refuse to submit to government regulation.