From Catholic News Service

Time ripe for improvement in Vatican-China relations, official says

By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The time is ripe for improvement in Vatican-China relations, said a top Vatican official.

In interviews with a Hong Kong television station and local newspaper, South China Morning Post, the Vatican's foreign minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, said there was hope for an eventual normalization of relations between the two states.

"The fact itself of (China) entering into unofficial contacts is an attitude not of closure but of openness," the archbishop told the Hong Kong-based newspaper.

While official diplomatic ties have been severed since 1951, some sort of improvement may be on the horizon, he added.

"The time is ripe," the archbishop said March 25 on a Hong Kong cable television program. "We hope for an opening on the part of the Chinese authorities, who cannot ignore the expectations of their people or the signs of the times."

While unofficial talks with China have been marked by "highs and lows, as happens in any negotiation," discussions so far "have not been without fruit," he said.

The archbishop's comments were made the day after Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun was inducted into the College of Cardinals. Archbishop Lajolo said the appointment was "intended to be a recognition of the high values of culture and wisdom of the great Chinese tradition and of the role of modern China in today's world."

The Diocese of Hong Kong should serve as an example of what granting full religious freedom to all people in mainland China could mean, he added.

The "harmonious presence" of the Catholic Church in Hong Kong, its peaceful religious activity in the city, and the "intellectual vivacity" of Cardinal Zen should be seen as an example of what the Catholic Church and its leaders are about, the archbishop said. The positive example of the church in Hong Kong "could break down the walls of prejudice and fear toward the Catholic Church" still present in China, he said.

Archbishop Lajolo said the work of normalizing Vatican ties with China has been contradictory because although top officials seem to "have the will to regularize the relations" some intermediate officials "row against it."

Last year, relations showed signs of improvement when several new Chinese bishops chosen by the Vatican received government approval. But last October, Chinese officials did not grant travel permission to Chinese bishops invited to the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican. Church sources also reported Chinese authorities continued to arrest and harass bishops, priests and seminarians, primarily from the underground church.

The underground church has been in existence since the 1950s, when China tried to force Catholics and other Christians to join government-approved patriotic associations. Cardinal Zen has said that today up to 85 percent of the government-approved bishops have reconciled secretly with the Vatican and that, in some areas of China, the two churches intermingle at the parish and diocesan levels.

Cardinal Zen told Vatican Radio March 26 that his elevation was the Pope's expression of his love for Catholics and all people in China.

He said that as a cardinal who plays an advisory role to the Pope he did not know if he would be allowed to play a more influential role with mainland government authorities than he has as bishop of Hong Kong, a special autonomous region of China.

The cardinal said he would be pleased to explain the church's true mission to Chinese government officials who might have mistaken notions about the Catholic Church.

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