Vatican official urges Chinese clerics to continue promoting unity

(July 30, 2010) The head of the Vatican's missionary office urged bishops and priests in China to live simple life, , show kindness to all people and continue working for the unity of the Catholic community on the mainland. Indian Cardinal Ivan Dias, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, wrote to Chinese bishops and priests on July 5 reflecting on the themes Pope Benedict XVI highlighted during the Year for Priests, which ended in June. The prelate said bishops and priests must remember they are ministers of Christ and his forgiveness, servants of all people and promoters of the unity of the church. Promoting unity, he said, requires both communion with the pope and with other Catholics. The cardinal acknowledged the suffering some of them bore because of their loyalty to the Holy See saying, “the exemplary and courageous loyalty toward the See of Peter demonstrated by Catholics in China is a precious gift of the Lord." China forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951, shortly after the officially atheist Communist Party took power. Instead, it established the government-controlled Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, and persecuted those pledging loyalty to the Pope of Rome. Cardinal Dias reminded China’s Catholics of how the church "is subjected to the greatest danger by what pollutes the faith and Christian life of her members and communities." “One of the typical effects of the action of the Evil One,” he said, “is, precisely, the internal division of the ecclesial community."