Pope Benedict XVI yesterday invited all Roman Catholics in China to unite under his jurisdiction and urged Beijing to restore diplomatic ties and permit religious freedom.
He called the state-run Catholic Church "incompatible" with Catholic doctrine, but nevertheless made unprecedented overtures toward it.
In an eagerly awaited letter to the faithful in China taking up a priority of his papacy, Benedict insisted on his right to appoint bishops, but said he trusted that an agreement could be reached with Beijing on nominations.
Significantly, Benedict revoked previous Vatican-issued restrictions on contacts with the clergy of the official church and recognized that some Chinese faithful have no choice but to attend officially recognized Masses.
The Vatican said in a note accompanying the letter that it was prepared to move its diplomatic representation from Taiwan to Beijing "at any time" as soon as an agreement with the government was reached.
The letter was the most significant effort by Benedict to balance his pastoral concerns for the up to 12 million Roman Catholics in China who are divided between an official church -- the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association -- and an underground church that is not registered with the authorities.
The Beijing government forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951, shortly after the officially atheist Chinese Communist Party took power. Worship is allowed only in the government-controlled churches.
Millions of Chinese, however, belong to unofficial congregations that remain loyal to Rome.
On several occasions, Benedict praised Catholics who resisted pressure to join the official church and paid a price for it "with the shedding of their blood."
But he urged them to forgive and reconcile with others for the sake of unifying the church.
Tellingly, Benedict referred repeatedly to the "Catholic Church in China," without distinguishing between the divisions -- an indication of his aim to see the two united and in communion with Rome.
On several occasions, he also called the Patriotic Association "incompatible with Catholic doctrine" because it named its own bishops and sought to guide the life of the church.
At the same time, however, Benedict made an unprecedented gesture, revoking 1988 guidelines issued by the Vatican's evangelization office that sought to limit contacts with the official church and declared that any bishop ordained by the official church would incur an automatic excommunication.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ¥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000