HONG KONG (SE): The benefits of an equitable agreement coming out of the ongoing Vatican-Beijing dialogue seem obvious enough for the Catholic Church, but no one enters into an international negotiation unless there is something in it for them as well, so what’s in it for China?

SAN DIEGO (SE): Although there are converging interests between China and the Vatican on the appointments of bishops, the two hold quite different agendas in the current, much-discussed negotiations between the two parties.

By John Cardinal Tong

HONG KONG (UCAN): Government-sanctioned Catholic organisations in China held their Ninth National Congress for Catholic Representatives in December 2016.

What is worrying is that this congress claims to be the supervisor of the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China, while the conference itself claims authority over individual diocesan bishops.

Neither of these two practices are compatible with Canon Law or the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

HONG KONG (SE): “If you had asked me one year ago about the chances of a deal (between the Vatican and Beijing), I would have said remote to nil,” Ian Johnson, the author of Wild Grass, a reflection on civil society and grassroots protest in China, said in a blog posted on SupChina on January 6.

HONG KONG (SE): The Vatican has broken its silence on two much discussed topics amongst Catholics in China and in the international media; the convening of the Ninth Congress of Catholic Representatives, which was slated to take place in Beijing from December 26 to 29, and the presence of an illicitly ordained bishop at two ordinations, one in Chengdu and the other in Xichang on November 30 and December 2.

HONG KONG (SE): Joseph Cardinal Zen Ze-kiun expressed guarded pessimism over the negotiations currently being carried on between the Vatican and Beijing at an afternoon gathering at St. Vincent’s Chapel in Wong Tai Sin organised by the Justice and Peace Commission on November 13.

ROME (SE): The gift from China that Pope Francis spoke of with journalists during his return flight to Rome from Baku in Azerbaijan on October 2 is a silk print drape inscribed with ideogrammes from the historical Christian Stele of Xi’an.

It depicts the long narrative inscribed on the famous stele, which is also referred to as the Nestorian Stele, which dates back to 781 during the Tang Dynasty, and documents the first 150 years of the presence of Nestorian Christians in the Middle Kingdom.

HONG KONG (UCAN): Pope Francis met with Bishop Joseph Xu Honggen from mainland China during a public audience at St. Peter’s Square on October 5 in the first public meeting between a pope and a bishop resident in China since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949.

Photographs published by L’Osservatore Romano show the bishop kissing the pope’s ring, chatting with him one-on-one and the two waving to the camera and the crowds together.