Vatican condemns China’s interference in Church as rights violation

(December 17, 2010) The Vatican has sharply condemned a meeting last week of senior members of China's government-backed Catholic Church, citing violations of religious freedom and human rights. A Vatican statement released on Friday said the “unacceptable and hostile acts” have damaged the dialogue and “the climate of trust” between the Holy See and the Beijing government. At a Dec. 7-9 meeting in Beijing, the government-backed Church, called the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association ,elected new leaders, including a prelate unrecognized by the Vatican to head its bishops' council. The Vatican said the meeting “was imposed on numerous Bishops, priests, religious and lay faithful,” and “the manner in which it was convoked and its unfolding manifest a repressive attitude with regard to the exercise of religious liberty, which it was hoped had been consigned to the past in present-day China.” “The persistent desire to control the most intimate area of citizens’ lives, namely their conscience, and to interfere in the internal life of the Catholic Church does no credit to China,” the Vatican statement said. “On the contrary, it seems to be a sign of fear and weakness rather than of strength; of intransigent intolerance rather than of openness to freedom and to effective respect both of human dignity and of a correct distinction between the civil and religious spheres.” Communist China forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951. Only state-backed churches are recognized, although millions of Chinese belong to unofficial congregations loyal to Rome.