The Vatican on Nov. 26 publicly criticized the Chinese government's transfer of a Catholic bishop, and some human rights advocates and religious freedom experts hope this noted shift in Rome's posture will continue.
A Chinese bishop, asked to step aside by the Vatican last year, said he does not think he can concelebrate the Holy Thursday chrism Mass unless he agrees to China's policy on the Catholic Church.
The Vatican's tentative agreement with the government of mainland China obviously has a diplomatic component, but it was motivated by a desire to spread the Gospel and ensure the appropriate freedom of the Catholic Church, the Vatican secretary of state wrote.
Distinctly Catholic: Francis has made dialogue a leitmotif of his papacy, and so it should not surprise anyone that he is also committed to dialogue in regards to both healing the divisions within the Chinese Church and proclaiming the Gospel in that country.
The Catholic Church's process of reconciliation in China is not a "competition or who is right, but of brothers and sisters in the faith," said Cardinal Fernando Filoni, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
As part of its ongoing efforts to reconcile China's Catholic communities, the Vatican recognized two previously excommunicated Chinese bishops as heads of dioceses.
The Vatican is still planning to interfere in affairs of the Catholic Church in China, a provincial religious affairs official told local Catholic representatives at a government seminar.
The Catholic Church is one throughout the world, and Pope Francis' agreement with the communist government of China is a sign of that, Bishop John Baptist Yang Xiaoting of Yan'an told members of a Rome parish.
