‘New course’ on China: Cardinal Zen

June 05, 2012: The Vatican has adopted a “new course” in its relations with the Chinese government and the state-sponsored “official” Church, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, Hong Kong’s former bishop, has told ucanews.

“I think the Holy See now has decided to tackle the real problem, and that is the Patriotic Association,” Cardinal Zen said, referring to the government-sanctioned association that regulates Catholic affairs in the country. He was speaking in Vicenza, Italy, where he went as a guest of the annual Biblical festival held in the city last week.

Cardinal Zen participated in April at the yearly meeting of the Vatican Commission created by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 to discuss the problems of the Church in China.

According to him, the communique issued at the end of the meeting was “good enough” as it “clarified” that participation of illegitimate bishops to Vatican-approved bishop ordinations and similar acts are “obstacles on the path to unity.”

Nevertheless, he noted, the Vatican communique “stopped short” of calling bishops to quit the Patriotic Association. “It may not be successful to say such a strong thing in this moment,” Cardinal Zen admitted, stressing that such a decision is already implied in Pope Benedict’s Letter to Chinese Catholics of 2007.

“The people really want to be Catholics so it means a clearly schismatic [church] holds no future at all. So you should not be afraid. I think we should be more afraid of a schismatic Church with the blessings of the Holy See.”

The retired bishop said that the real problem of the Church in China is that “organisms that are not part of the Church are leading the Church, and are above bishops. That is the Patriotic Association. “The majority in the official Church are not bad people but they are hesitant and under pressure. Now they know that the Holy See is going to be more clear and that would be helpful.”

For Cardinal Zen, the Vatican’s “new course” began with the appointment, between the end of 2010 and 2011, of a Chinese archbishop, Monsignor Savio Hon Tai-Fai, as secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, which oversees mission regions such as China, and of Cardinal Fernando Filoni as its Prefect. Filoni “worked for years in Hong Kong for the Church in China.”