HONG KONG (UCAN): The crackdown on religion in Henan province—a key centre of Christianity in China—has been ratcheted up as the government seized an unregistered Catholic church managed by a priest with the official Church.
 
On April 24, cadres from Diandian Town in Shangcai County, sent two officials in the morning to seal the main entrances of Gadazhang Catholic Church in the Diocese of Zhumadian.
 
“The government will not allow the church to register or to open,” a source said.

HONG KONG (UCAN): Bishop Vincent Guo Xijin of the unofficial Church in Mindong, Fujian province, was taken from his home on March 26, according to AsiaNews. 
The 59-year-old bishop received a call from the local Administration for Religious Affairs on March 26 asking to meet at his office. 
 
After least two hours of talks, the bishop returned to his home at 7.00pm where packed his bags before being taken away at 10.00pm.
 
The priest who is the bishop’s secretary was also taken away.

HONG KONG (SE): The celebration of Christmas in China has gained popularity as its consumer society has taken off, but while it may be more of a commercial affair, Christians use its popularity to point people towards Christ.
 
Brent Fulton, from ChinaSource, says that in churches, rented banquet rooms and even on university campuses, carefully planned celebrations clearly present the gospel.
 
This is in stark contrast to two decades ago.
 

FENGXIANG (SE): Bishop Lucas Li Jingfeng, who was emboldened in 1980 to take a step in disobedience to the Church by accepting episcopal ordination from his predecessor in Fengxiang, Bishop Anthony Zhou Weidao, without a mandate from the Holy See, died at 7.20am on November 17.
 

HONG KONG (SE): There was nothing unpredictable in the comments on religion in the opening speech given by the president of China, Xi Jinping, at the Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in the Great Hall of the People on October 18.
 
His comments had been signalled for some time in a series of new regulations that are now in place and ready to come into effect on February 2 next year.
 

HONG KONG (SE): c was by far the most far-sighted of the modern day advocates of the need for the local Church in China to express the faith and the word of God within the cultural symbols and language of the local culture.
 
As the first apostolic delegate to China, he was a man well ahead of his time in terms of developing the Church that was then known as a foreign mission, and the tremendous contribution that he made to the maturing of the Church in China is now prompting significant numbers of Catholics to call for his beatification.