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_WORLD WATCH______________________________
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Vatican seeks US help
Trade seen as a key
The Vatican has reportedly asked the United States to help open direct lines of communication between the Holy See and the Communist government of China.
According to a Reuters news story report, the request was made during a meeting between US President George W. Bush and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State. “Given the United States’ privileged position in relations with China, both economic and political, Sodano asked Bush to help convince China to open up a channel of communications with the Vatican,” a source in Rome told Reuters.
Briefing reporters after the meeting, US National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice said Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell had spoken with Vatican leaders about the Catholic bishops who have been arrested in China. “The President is going to raise the issue with the Chinese. He is more than happy to raise the issue of religious freedom as well as issues as to how relations between the Vatican and China might be made better,” she said.
Bishop released
Campaign still continues against underground Catholics
The Vatican news agency Fides has reported that Chinese Bishop Joseph Zhang
Weizhu, who was taken into police custody in January, has apparently been released.
Bishop Zhang, who heads the Diocese of Xinxiang, is a leader of the “unofficial,” or underground, Catholic Church. Because the Communist government regards the underground Church as illegal, Bishop Zhang has been repeatedly arrested and kept in custody for varying periods of time. Catholics in Xinxiang reported that the bishop’s most recent release was prompted by his health problems.
The Beijing government recognizes only those Catholics who accept the authority of the government-sponsored Catholic Patriotic Association. Since 1995 the government has been engaged in a campaign to eliminate the underground Catholic Church, which has maintained loyalty to the Holy See.
There are an estimated 8,000 Catholics in the Xinxiang diocese, which is located in Henan, south of Beijing. It is difficult to say how many of these Catholics are active in the underground Church, since the lines between “official” and “unofficial” Catholic activities are often blurred.
Quota for abortions
New vigor for one-child policy
China’s Communist government has ordered a remote, poverty-stricken province to conduct 20,000 abortions by the end of the year after revelations arose that the official one-child policy was being routinely ignored.
The edict was issued after census officials revealed that the average family in Huaiji province has five or more children. Many of the abortions will have to be conducted forcibly on peasant women to meet the quota, the report said.
Despite the latest report of human-rights violations in connection with China’s draconian family-planning efforts, UN officials continued to support Beijing’s efforts. “For all the bad press, China has achieved the impossible. The country has solved its population problem,” said Sven Burmester of the United Nations Population Fund.
Back to Catholic World Report October 2001 Table of Contents