Bishop Ordinations in 2007 Return to Holy See Involvement

May 5, 2008

The state-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), which oversees China's registered Catholic church, ordained three bishops in late 2007 who had received approval from the Holy See, continuing a trend that was interrupted in 2006 by several bishop ordinations without Holy See approval.

The state-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), which oversees China's registered Catholic church, ordained three bishops in late 2007 who had received approval from the Holy See, continuing a trend that was interrupted in 2006 by several bishop ordinations without Holy See approval. Although the CPA appoints and ordains bishops according to its own internal procedures and does not recognize the authority of the Holy See to make such appointments, in recent years it has tolerated discreet involvement by the Holy See in the selection of some bishops. After breaking with this practice for some bishop appointments in 2006, the CPA ordained a total of five bishops in 2007 all of whom had Holy See approval. Recent ordinations include:

  • Lü Shouwang, ordained as bishop of the Yichang diocese in Hubei province on November 30. For Chinese government reporting on the event, see an article posted December 3 on the Web site of the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA). See a December 3 article from the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCAN) for overseas reporting on the ordination.
  • Gan Junqiu, ordained as bishop of the Guangzhou diocese in Guangdong province on December 4, a year after being elected to the post. According to November 16 and December 3 articles from AsiaNews, internal disputes over which bishops would be involved in the ordination had delayed the date of the ceremony. For Chinese reporting on the event, see a December 7 SARA article.
  • Li Jing, ordained as coadjutor bishop of the Ningxia diocese in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region on December 21. According to a December 10 article from AsiaNews, the issue of whether bishops with Holy See approval would preside over the ordination may have been a factor in postponing the ceremony from its originally scheduled date of December 8. For additional information, see December 21 articles from AsiaNews and UCAN, as well as a January 7 correction to the UCAN story. See also a December 22 article from the China Daily (via the China Internet Information Center) and a December 24 report from SARA.

In September, the CPA ordained the coadjutor bishop of the Guizhou diocese and the bishop of Beijing. The ordinations followed an open letter from Pope Benedict XVI to Catholic church members in China, written in May and issued the following month, urging reconciliation between registered and unregistered Catholic communities in China and expressing concern about bishop selections by Chinese state authorities. The extent to which the subsequent five bishop ordinations with Holy See approval were a response to the letter, however, remains unclear, given factors including delays in some of the ordinations and in the Chinese government's initial reaction to the letter. Chinese authorities blocked Internet access to the letter, and local officials reportedly detained some Catholic clergy in an effort to assert authority in the aftermath of the letter's publication.

For more information, see Section II---Freedom of Religion, in the Congressional-Executive Commission on China 2007 Annual Report (via the Government Printing Office Web site).