VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican and the government-backed Chinese Catholic Church have agreed for the first time on the nomination of a bishop in a sign of warming relations after decades of strain.<\/p>\n
The Chinese-backed Church ordained Joseph Xing Wenzhi as an auxiliary bishop of Shanghai on Tuesday in an appointment that was approved by the Holy See, according to AsiaNews, a Catholic news agency specialising in China.<\/p>\n
China does not allow Catholics to recognise the authority of the Pope. Instead, they must belong to state-backed patriotic associations if they want to worship openly.<\/p>\n
The communist government has repeatedly refused to allow the Vatican to appoint bishops officially, saying this would amount to interference in internal affairs.<\/p>\n
That led to a two-tiered Catholicism in China, with pro-Vatican priests and bishops working underground while the pro-government clerics held the official posts. The Vatican officially has not recognised the pro-government church.<\/p>\n
Asianews said Xing could eventually replace the elderly bishop of Shanghai, Aloysius Jin Luxian, the pro-government prelate who ordained the new bishop on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Last week, the Vatican’s foreign minister suggested the chances of normalising relations with China were growing, saying there were "no insurmountable difficulties".<\/p>\n
China has insisted the Vatican must break relations with Taiwan before it can forge diplomatic ties.<\/p>\n
The Vatican estimates it has about 8 million followers in China, compared with about 5 million who follow the state-backed association. [Source<\/a>]<\/p>\n Or maybe not.<\/p>\n SHANGHAI (AFP) – China says the appointment of an auxiliary bishop in Shanghai had not been approved by the "It has nothing to do with the Vatican."<\/p>\n Xing, a 42-year-old Chinese priest, was made auxiliary bishop in a ceremony led by Shanghai Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian, the representative of the government-backed Catholic church who at the age of 89 is giving up many of his duties, officials at the religious affairs bureau said.<\/p>\n Xing, who becomes bishop in the official Chinese church, reportedly announced during the ceremony he had been nominated by the Holy See, suggesting that he received full backing from the Pope. [Source<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican and the government-backed Chinese Catholic Church have agreed for the first time on the nomination of a bishop in a sign of warming relations…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n"He was chosen by our Shanghai Catholic community and was approved by the Chinese Catholic Bishops College," said an official with the Shanghai Religious Affairs Bureau, who refused to be named.<\/p>\n