Catholic Online Forum

Fathers Liu Jianzhong, Zhang Cunhui and Zhong Mingchang of Xuanhua diocese were taken away by plainclothes police on June 8, June 14 and Sept. 16 respectively.

Local Church sources said that when the priests' family members went to government departments to enquire about them, the authorities denied detaining them and refused family requests to help locate them.

Meanwhile, Father Simon Zhang Jianlin, who was taken by police in July, is under house arrest in a county government building. Sources say he has been "brainwashed" and has been persuaded to join the Catholic Patriotic Association, but he is allowed to receive visitors in the premises.

Sources said that other underground priests of the same diocese are also under pressure to join the government approved Church and are under strict surveillance by local authorities.

They explained that about half of the 40 or so underground priests of Xuanhua diocese have registered with the government to obtain special "priest cards" which allow them to work openly under government regulations. However, they continue to follow the leadership of underground Bishop Thomas Zhao Kexun of Xuanhua. The bishop, in his 80s, has been hiding from the government.

By government order, 100 people destroyed the Dongsheng church in the middle of the night. The priest and the leadership of the laity were imprisoned for 20 hours. Catholics are camped in the rubble to prevent the beginning of construction.

According Ucanews.com, some relatives of the priest were waiting - along with about 20 lay people of the diocese - outside the gates of the Tangshang Jidong prison. As the gates opened at 4 am, Fr. Wang was able to take only a few steps before being grabbed by 4 men, who pushed him into a car and brought him back into the prison.

About an hour after the gates were reopened to allow two police cars pass. The crowd stopped the car to talk to the priest. According to one source, Fr. Wang told them "not to create problems with the police. He added that he was in good health and asked us to let him go". Several hours later, he phoned his sister to say that he was "doing well".

Catholics believe that local authorities would like Fr. Wang to “work in the light of the day by accepting the authority of the government run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association". The fast "re-arrest," they explain, comes from the fact that the police fear that the faithful will hide and protect him once back home.

Fr. Wang was arrested July 24 2007. The police took him together with two other priests from a Catholic family who had hidden them in Xilinguole (Inner Mongolia). At the trial, held on 11 November of that year, the allegations against him were finally revealed: organizing an illegal meeting [the feast for the consecration of a church in Guyuan, dedicated to the Sacred Heart], he used an official parish seal [in China legally binding signature-ed] without government permission”.

AsiaNews sources report that many bishops from different provinces, to avoid being dragged to Beijing, have gone into hiding or declared themselves too ill to attend. Others have been taken by government representatives and dragged against their will to the Assembly. Some bishops who knew they could not escape, agreed to come to Beijing, but decided not to celebrate the Assembly masses together, because of the presence of excommunicated bishops.

However the same sources claim that there are bishops who did not oppose any resistance. The Diocese of Beijing, in its newsletter, published two articles in honor of the event.

The most serious and obvious violence occurred in Hengshui (Hebei), where Mgr. Feng Xinmao was seized by about 100 police officers and government representatives, who fought for hours against the faithful and priests who were shielding their bishop in an attempt to ensure his freedom. One faithful was injured in the shoulder during the assault. In recent days, the bishop had been kept in isolation, away from his home. The faithful succeeded in snatching him from police control, to take him back to his residence. After a siege lasting hours, the bishop was again arrested and last night at 20:30, Mgr. Feng Xinmao was dragged to Beijing to attend the meeting. One of the faithful, weeping, as the bishop was escorted away, said: "Our poor bishop has no freedom."

Another prelate, Msgr. Li Lianghui Cangzhou (Hebei) has disappeared to escape the meeting in Beijing. The police has threatened the diocese, that if the bishop does not surrender, he will be hunted throughout the country like "a dangerous criminal."

This Assembly and the forced deportation of bishops cast a dark shadow on relations between China and the Vatican, after years of detente. The situation has precipitated in recent weeks, after the illicit ordination of Fr Guo Jincai Bishop of Chengde, on 20 November. The PA forced eight official bishops to attend the ceremony, against the wishes of the Holy See, which condemned the incident as "a serious violation of religious freedom."

Zhou Zhi (Agenzia Fides) – A small village on Silk Road, inhabited by 660 people, of whom 400 are Catholic (about 130 families), has given 14 vocations to the Church in recent years: 7 priests, 1 deacon, 3 religious sisters, 2 major seminarians and 1 minor seminarian. The village is Zan Jia Cun, Fu Feng district in the Diocese of Zhou Zhi, Shaan Xi province.

According to information received by Fides, the whole diocese is famous for its abundance in vocations, so much so that it is known as “the diocese of vocations”. The pastor of the village comments: “many people ask us what is our secret. To tell the truth, we do not know whether it amounts to a secret or not. We intensely live out our faith. The families of the village pray together daily. Mass and prayer meetings on Saturday and Sunday are fixed appointments for all. Even the faithful from villages around us come. I think these small daily testimonies have built the base for an eloquent evangelisation and they are useful at the same time for the formation of vocations. The children are educated according to religious principles and in a simple way, from kindergarten to middle school. The sisters keep up their formation with the Catechism and teaching of religion. Here there is never the need to prepare a list for the evenings of Eucharistic Adoration in Holy Week, or in other circumstances, because the church is always full, 24 hours a day.”

Other Catholic communities often visit this village, to exchange experiences on evangelization and vocations. However non-Catholics also come, as this small village on the Silk Road is also a model of economic development. "Some non-Catholics ask us why we are so happy, and we respond because we have faith,” concludes the pastor. “When the faithful have had economic opportunities, the first thing they thought of was to build, renovate and improve the house of God. Our church is the most beautiful in the whole area. The priests and nuns who live in rooms adjacent to the church wake up at 4 am with the recitation of the Rosary by the faithful”.

Beijing (AsiaNews) – Police in Yangdang, Hubei province, raided a Christian legal centre, causing havoc for members who were studying the regulations of the Religious Affairs Bureau. A group of 180 police agents, led by the chiefs of the local police and Religious Affairs Bureau, stormed the site. They used tear gas, beat up those present, including two women, one elderly, and smashed the centre’s equipment. China Aid, an organisation that monitors religious freedom in China, made public the incident, which occurred on 23 February.

Beijing (AsiaNews) – Since last January, at least two underground priests (in communion with the Pope), from Xuanhua dioceses (Hebei), near Beijing, have been detained and badly beaten up. They are among at least 20 underground priests in Xuanhua and Xiwanzi dioceses have been tortured and pressured to “register” with the government-sponsored Church associated with the Communist Party-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association over the past two decades, sources, anonymous per request, told AsiaNews.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) – Nothing is known about Fr Joseph Chen Hailong of Xuanhua (Hebei), two months after he disappeared. On 29 June, Hong Kong Catholics will stage a protest to demand the release of jailed clergymen and respect for Catholic believers.

Ordained two years ago, Fr Chen was taken into custody on 9 April in Yangqing, Beijing County, where he exercised his ministry. His whereabouts remain unknown. His family does not have any information about his fate and fears he might have been tortured like Fr Peter Zhang Guangjun, who comes from the same diocese.

Fr Zhang, who was held between 10 January and 13 April 2011, was hit with fists, sticks, a bucket, and was forced to stay awake for five days, soaked in cold water in the middle of winter, until he collapsed.

“He always refused to accept the principle of an autonomous and self-governed Church, independent [from the Pope],” an anonymous source told AsiaNews. “He was eventually released on 13 April.”

“During those days, despite the physical pain, I prayed the rosary and said Mass every day, in silence,” Fr Zhang told those he met. “I imagined praying with my parishioners and that gave me spiritual strength.”

“It was however impossible to force me to celebrate Mass with priests from the patriotic Church or get me to register, so officials insulted me, the Church and God. I defended myself and was tortured again,” he was quoted as saying.

“After he was released, he showed injuries to the head and the legs, clear signs of torture,” a source said. “Now he is undergoing medical treatment for his head injuries. He still suffers from headaches and vomits.”

Beijing (AsiaNews) – The Episcopal ordination of Fr Joseph Sun Jigen as the coadjutor bishop of Handan, Hebei (northern China) this Wednesday, feast day of Sts Peter and Paul, has been cancelled, Catholic sources, anonymous for security reasons, told AsiaNews today.

The 43-year-old bishop-designate was taken away by police yesterday morning morning after a five-day spiritual retreat, they said.

Fr Sun’s appointment had been approved by the Holy See and recognised by the Chinese government.

Local Catholics said that his whereabouts are unknown. Some people believe he was taken to Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital, north of Handan.

The authorities in Baoding (Hebei) have deployed police in the streets, ordered controls on mobile phones and banned groups from meeting in homes to prevent a simple act, namely remembering the birthday of Mgr James Su Zhimin (pictured), Baoding’s underground bishop who disappeared in the hands of the police in 1997.

[...]

For the authorities, Mgr Su Zhimin is China’s “most reactionary bishop” because of his faithfulness to the pope. For the faithful, he “is the greatest and most famous Chinese bishop because of his faithfulness to the Holy See.”

Mgr Su Zhimin had replaced Joseph Fan Xueyan, who died in 1993 under torture by police.

The clergymen were holding a spiritual retreat for priests. At present, they are held in isolation in Dongming without water and food. Public security and the Religious Affairs Bureau want to force them to join the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which is trying to create a breakaway Church, independent of the pope. Underground Catholics urge action by the Holy See and the universal Church to free them.

Now Fr Wang Chengli, 48 and diocesan administrator, Fr Zhao Wuji, 50s, Fr Li Xianyang, 34, and Fr Sun Guichun, 38, are in prison.

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Four-pri ... 22302.html
Four priests arrested in Shandong, appeal to the Holy See and Church

Congressman Chris Smith said, "The uncontested facts are these: Any Chinese, Tibetan, or Uyghur mother without a birth permit is put under coercive pressure ...to abort - if need be, she is physically forced to do so. All unwed moms are compelled to abort. In what can only be described as a search-and-destroy mission, disabled children are aborted as part of a nationwide eugenics program."

The first one is Mgr James Su Zhimin (pictured, right), the almost 80-year-old bishop of Baoding (Hebei), arrested by police on 8 October 1997. Since then, nothing has been known about the charges that led to his arrest, or his trial and place of detention. In November 2003, he was seen in a Baoding hospital surrounded by public security officers. After a quick visit by relatives, he was taken away and disappeared without a trace.

The second case is that of Mgr Cosma Shi Enxiang (pictured, left), 90, bishop of Yixian (Hebei), who was arrested on 13 April 2001. Nothing is known about his fate either, even though his relatives and parishioners continue to ask police for information about him.

The two deserve to be remembered alongside other famous dissidents, like Nobel Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo and the great Bao Tong, because they have been fighting for the freedom of the individual and their faith for far longer. In a certain sense, they are the dissidents’ prophets. They were the first to suffer persecution, the first to be arrested and convicted, the first to appeal to the international community and the first to be forgotten.

Before his last arrest, Mgr Su Zhimin spent at least 26 years in prison or forced labour camps. Labelled a “counterrevolutionary” in the 1950s, he has always refused to join the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, whose goal is to set up a national Church separate from the pope. In 1996, from a secret location because he was a wanted man, he issued an open letter to the Chinese government demanding respect for human rights and religious freedom. Overall, he spent 40 years in prison.

Mgr Shi Enxiang spent even more time in jail. Between 1957 and 1980, he was held in a forced labour farm in Heilongjiang as well as coal mine in Shanxi. He was re-arrested in 1983 and held under house arrest for three years. Again, he was arrested in 1989, when underground bishops set up their own Bishops’ Conference, and held until 1993. In 2001, he was detained once more. Altogether, he has spent 51 years in prison.

As social unrest spreads across China over justice and dignity for workers and peasants, it is worth remembering these champions because they fought like them and before them for the truth, without taking up arms, often alone, without the comfort of social networks like Facebook or Twitter.

It is worth remembering them because the Chinese regime could let them die under torture, as it did with other jailed Chinese bishops (Mgrs Joseph Fan Xueyan in 1992, John Gao Kexian in 2006 and John Han Dingxiang in 2007).

Coadjutor Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou and his chancellor Father Paul Jiang Sunian were spirited away this week to attend “learning classes,” sources say.

Bishop Shao, 49, was appointed by the Holy See in to lead Wenzhou’s “underground” community in 2007 and is not recognized by the government.

He and Fr Jiang were taken on Monday.

If Bishop Shao and Father Jiang are “intelligent enough in their learning,” they will be allowed back soon; if not, they will be detained longer, local Church sources quoted government officials as saying.

Though no official reasons have been given, the sources suspect the recent events may be linked to the secret episcopal ordination in Tianshui diocese in Gansu province last year.

Government officials are investigating who was involved in the ordination, they said.

Catholic source tells AsiaNews that security measures have been tightened in the village, used to accommdoate a Marian shrine. Officials enforce round-the-clock control on the village. Lay Catholic leaders are also under surveillance. Banners call for resistance against "foreign infiltration". Faithful pray instead to Our Lady for Church unity.

we will listen to and deliberate the State Council's report on deepening the reform of the cultural system and promoting the great development and flourishing of socialist culture, inspect enforcement of the Law on the Protection of Cultural Relics, and give impetus to implementing the guiding principles of the Sixth Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Party Central Committee.

[...] We will make inquiries on such topics as reform and development of state-owned enterprises, development of irrigation and water conservancy, and ensuring safe drinking water, and conduct topic-specific investigations and studies on issues related to accelerating the transformation of the pattern of economic development, strengthening environmental protection, and promoting urban community development, in order to make our oversight of these areas more effective.

The socialist system with Chinese characteristics, including the system of people's congresses, is the fundamental institutional guarantee for the development and progress of contemporary China, and we must cherish it even more and adhere to it for a long time to come. To successfully uphold and improve the system of people's congresses, we need to thoroughly understand the intrinsic nature of China's system of people's congresses; confidently uphold our unique characteristics; be fully aware of the essential differences between this system and Western capitalist countries' systems of political power; remain sober-minded and take a firm and clear stand on major issues of principle; and unwaveringly keep to the socialist path of political development with Chinese characteristics.

ROME (Reuters) - A priest who quit China's state-sanctioned Catholic Church and was ordained auxiliary bishop of Shanghai with the approval of the pope at the weekend was taken away by officials after the ceremony and has not been heard from since, a Catholic online news service reported on Monday.

Bishop Ma's whereabouts were unclear Tuesday. Cardinal Zen said Bishop Ma had sent a note to clergy members on Sunday to inform them he would take a weeklong retreat in the outskirts of Shanghai, though Cardinal Zen said he wasn't aware of the circumstances surrounding the move.

Vatican officials didn't respond to requests for comment about Bishop Ma's whereabouts. Officials at the church in Shanghai, at the Shanghai diocese and at the Shanghai Sheshan Seminary, where Bishop Ma said in the letter he would be staying, also didn't respond to questions.

Shanghai (AsiaNews) - Mgr Thaddeus Ma Daqin, auxiliary bishop of Shanghai, is back on his blog. It had been blocked the day of his ordination, 7 July. Holed up in the Sheshan Seminary for the past nine days, the prelate has come under investigation for "seriously" violating the rules governing Episcopal ordinations in China. During his investiture ceremony, he refused the imposition of the hands by an unlawful bishop and anounced his resignation from the Chinese Patriotic Catholc Association (CPCA).

Today, Mgr Ma posted a picture and five poems on his blog. The previous posting was dated 6 July, the day before his ordination. At 5.30 PM, dozens of Catholics responded to the bishop's message with prayers and best wishes, as well as warm words of encouragement and consolation. Some wrote: "Please, take care of your health;" "Are you back?"; "How are you?"; "If you are OK, it must be a sunny day."

The seminaries will be closed until further notice, a nun was forced to step down as superior general. Seminarians and nuns "did not cooperate" with the government for the ordination of July 7, when Ma Daqin decided he was quitting the Patriotic Association. Catholics resistance to and criticism of official Church body on the rise.

Even bishops who so far have been very obedient to the PA are backtracking. At least two official bishops, requisitioned by the Party to participate in the illicit ordination of Harbin, refused and found a way not to go.

One bishop has confided to AsiaNews: "What is happening in Chinese society is also happening in the Catholic Church: the government has lost control of the masses and the people's trust. The faithful no longer pay any attention to the PA, it no longer counts".

Priests and nuns in the Shanghai diocese have been forced to attend compulsory “study classes”, which observers believe were imposed by Chinese authorities in response to the new Shanghai auxiliary’s renunciation of the Catholic Patriotic Association.

In September, approximately 80 diocesan priests and 80 nuns of the Our Lady of Presentation Congregation were divided into three groups to take three days of classes at the Shanghai Institute of Socialism, reported the Asian church news agency UCA News. Classes lasted 12 hours each day and included university professors lecturing about strengthening the sense of duty toward China, the law, and the independent Church principle, UCA News reported.

The main subjects included state-religion relations, the Communist Party’s religious concepts, policies and regulations, the socialist core value system and economic development in China, it said.

“I am very saddened that you cannot hear any voice from the Chinese Church.” Those were the words of an aged Chinese prelate, in a message that was delivered to participants in the Synod of Bishops on Tuesday, October 16.

Bishop Luke Li Jing Feng of Fengxiang sent a written message to the Synod, since he was unable to attend the meetings in Rome. His message was read aloud to the gathering by Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, the secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops.

At the age of 90, Bishop Feng has spent 20 years in Chinese prisons. “I want to say that our Church in China, in particular the laity, has always maintained the piety, faithfulness, sincerity and devotion of the first Christians, even whilst undergoing 50 years of persecution,” he wrote. The Chinese bishop challenged the Synod fathers:

In the Year of Faith, in your Synod discussions, you can examine why our faith in China was able to remain indefectible until now. As the great Chinese philosopher Lao Tse put it, “As calamity generates prosperity, so in weakness calamity hides.” In the churches outside of China, tepidness, unfaithfulness and secularism of the faithful have infected clergymen. In the Chinese Church, lay people are more pious than the clergy. And I believe that our faith as Chinese Christians can console the Pope. I shall not talk about politics because it is transient.

JMJ

update:
Catholics pray for the return of two priests, seized like their bishop-designate, in Handan
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Catholic ... 22007.html

in the meantime:

Ban on praying for Mgr Su Zhimin, who spent 40 years in prison
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Ban-on-p ... 22006.html

Rome (AsiaNews) - For 15 years the underground bishop of Baoding (Hebei), Msgr James Su Zhimin, has been held in police custody in an unknown location. On the anniversary of his disappearance, 8 October 1997, his family have made yet another request to the police to know the fate of their relative, but the answer was the same as it has been for the past for 15 years: "We do not know where he is".

Some priests of the diocese have told AsiaNews that in any case they do not want to stop putting pressure on the police and the authorities to reveal where they are holding the bishop now in his eighties, who has spent almost half his life, 40 years, in prison.

Their hope is in the change of leadership of the Director of the United Front, which manages the religious policy in the country. Until 1 September, the head was Du Qinglin, under whose command tensions have been heightened between China and the Vatican on illicit ordinations. Now he has been replaced by Ling Jihua, considered a moderate and a great friend of Hu Jintao.

Before his last detention, Msgr. Su Zhimin spent on and off at least 26 years in prison or forced labor camps, branded a "counterrevolutionary" simply because, since the 1950s, he has always refused to join the Patriotic Association, which wants to build a national Church detached from the Pope. In 1996 - from a hidden location because he was sought after by police - he managed to release an open letter to the Chinese government calling for respect for the human rights and religious freedom of the people.

The only occasion his family saw him was in November 2003, when he was discovered by chance in care at a hospital in Baoding, surrounded by police and public security. After a brief and hasty visit, he disappeared again in police custody and still today no-one knows of his fate. In all, he has spent 40 years in prison, without charge, without trial.

The government-sanctioned Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church of China (BCCCC) has revoked Thaddeus Ma Daqin’s appointment as “Coadjutor Bishop” of Shanghai, according to Church sources.

The Holy See appointed Father Ma Daqin Auxiliary Bishop of Shanghai. At his ordination on July 7, he became the first bishop to publicly quit the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA.)

Since then, Bishop Ma has been in “retreat” at the Sheshan Regional Seminary in a Shanghai suburb.

The BCCCC, which is not recognized by the Vatican, has also decreed that “a pledge of loyalty is required at all episcopal ordinations in future,” according to a source in Shanghai who requested anonymity. However, the source did not say who future bishops should pledge loyalty to.

With regard to news circulated recently about the situation of the bishop Ma Daqin of Shanghai, the Holy See at this time does not have any information other than what has appeared in the media. In any case, the Holy See's position on the matter was authoritatively expressed recently in an extensive article by Cardinal Filoni, published in the journal Tripod, which is worth recalling on this occasion:

“In practice, the situation remains serious. Some bishops and priests are segregated or deprived of their liberty, as recently happened in the case of the Bishop of Shanghai, Ma Daqin, for declaring his intention to dedicate himself full-time to the pastoral ministry, laying aside offices that, among other things, are not even within the competence of a pastor. Control over people and institutions has intensified, and recourse is had more readily to indoctrination sessions and pressure. In the absence of freedom of religion or in the presence of strong limitations, does it not pertain to the whole Church to defend the legitimate rights of Chinese faithful, and primarily to the Holy See to give voice to those who have none?”

Cardinal Joseph Zen, the retired Bishop of Hong Kong and leading critic of Chinese restrictions on religious freedom, has denounced the Beijing regime for revoking its recognition of Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin.