HAEMI: Pope Francis made his strongest gesture yet to reach out to China on Sunday, saying he wants to improve relations and insisting that the Catholic Church isn't coming in as a "conqueror" but is rather a partner in dialogue.
Francis outlined his priorities for the Catholic Church in Asia during a meeting of about 80 of the region's bishops, urging them to engage with people of different cultures empathetically.
"In this spirit of openness to others, I earnestly hope that those countries of your continent with whom the Holy See does not yet enjoy a full relationship may not hesitate to further a dialogue for the benefit of all," he said.
Then deviating from his text, he added: "I'm not talking here only about a political dialogue, but about a fraternal dialogue," he said. "These Christians aren't coming as conquerors, they aren't trying to take away our identity." He said the important thing was to "walk together."
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pope's remarks were "obviously a sign of goodwill for dialogue" with China as well as the other countries in Asia with which the Vatican doesn't have diplomatic relations: North Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, Bhutan and Brunei. "This offer of the pope for dialogue is to all these lands and not just one, even if China is the biggest," he said.
He acknowledged that Francis has so far refrained from making any outwardly political statement about China, which counts some 12 million Catholics, but that the speech was a clear affirmation of a desire for dialogue. It was also a message to the region's bishops that they can sow the seeds for dialogue through charitable works and educational services even before official diplomatic relations with the Holy See are established.
China cut relations with the Vatican in 1951, after the Communist Party took power and set up its own church outside the pope's authority. China persecuted the church for years until restoring a degree of religious freedom and freeing imprisoned priests in the late 1970s. The Vatican under then-Pope Benedict XVI sought to improve ties by seeking to unify the state-sanctioned church with the underground church still loyal to Rome.
Vatican-China ties have already broken new ground on Francis' first Asian trip, with Beijing agreeing to let Francis' Alitalia charter fly through its airspace; when St. John Paul II last came to South Korea in 1989, Beijing refused to let him fly overhead. With the fly-by confirmed, Francis sent the traditional greetings he sends to the leadership of countries he flies over. That said, there have been reports that some Chinese Catholics who wanted to participate in the Asian Catholic youth festival here were prevented from coming.
For the Vatican, the main stumbling block in relations remains the insistence of the official Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association on naming bishops without papal consent. For China, the naming of bishops is a matter of its national sovereignty, while it also objects that the Holy See has diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Lombardi sought to stress that the Vatican was always open to dialogue, and was not interested in questions of political sovereignty: "Authorities have not to fear the Holy See as a power that comes to exercise its foreign powers in the land, but is a religious authority that is of another order than the political and civil authorities," he said.
There was no immediate response Sunday from Beijing authorities — either from the government or the Patriotic Association. But earlier in the week, after the telegram was sent, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, told the government's China Daily that "we have noticed the remarks of Pope Francis."