Taiwan’s bishops arrived in Rome for their first meeting with Pope Francis and other Vatican officials in a decade amid ongoing Vatican negotiations with China.
The delegation of seven bishops came to Rome for a series of meetings to be held over the following week in an ad limina visit, where the bishops will report on the state of their diocese, according to Crux Now. It is the first meeting between Pope Francis and the bishops, and the bishops’ first meeting with a pope in 10 years. The meeting comes amid stalled negotiations between the Vatican and Beijing which, if resumed, could negatively affect the church in Taiwan.
“The values the Vatican holds are different from those of the Chinese Communist Party,” Archbishop John Hung Shan-chuan of Taipei told Reuters in March. “Building ties with the Vatican requires values including freedom and democracy.”
Hung said the negotiations surprised the bishops of Taiwan, since sharing “common values with each other” would be a prerequisite to the Vatican forming diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic of China. As part of the negotiations, the Vatican has discussed recognizing seven Chinese government-appointed bishops, in exchange for which the communist Chinese government would then recognize about 20 bishops openly appointed by the Vatican and 40 bishops appointed in the underground church. (RELATED: Chinese Government Reinterpreting The Bible For The Masses)
The Vatican’s capitulation to the Chinese government’s request for the removal of two bishops of the underground church, as part of the negotiations, garnered heavy criticism from within the church. Cardinal Joseph Zen, former bishop of Hong Kong, accused the Vatican of betraying the faithful in China when the Holy See asked the two bishops to step down. (RELATED: China Arrests Top Bishop Of The Country’s Underground Church)
“Do I think that the Vatican is selling out the Catholic Church in China?” Zen wrote in a social media post. “Yes, definitely, if they go in the direction which is obvious from all what they are doing in recent years and months.”
Negotiations appear to have stalled, due in large part to the Chinese communist party’s intensified efforts to crack down on religious minorities, including Christians, which began with the implementation of new religious regulations in February. The Vatican is also one of the most prominent sovereign nations to recognize as a sovereign state, despite China’s insistence that Taiwan is a rebel state, which could further complicate negotiations.
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