The Archbishop of Bologna, president of the CEI, has left for China, where he is expected to meet Prime Minister Li Qiang. He would be the first face to face of a member of the Catholic hierarchy with a head of government of the People’s Republic. Objective: to start a dialogue for peace in Ukraine
(AsiaNews) – Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, left for Beijing for the announced trip which is part of the mission entrusted to him by Pope Francis for peace in Ukraine and which has already seen him at the beginning of he summer stops in Kiev, Moscow and Washington. The news of the trip anticipated by the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” and confirmed by sources consulted by AsiaNews it was made official by the Holy See which specified that the cardinal will be in Beijing from 13 to 15 September and will be accompanied by an official from the Vatican Secretariat of State.
According to Italian journalistic reports – which speak of a role also played by Rome’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who recently returned from China – Cardinal Zuppi could personally meet Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang in Beijing. If this meeting were to actually take place, it would be the first ever between a member of the Catholic hierarchy and a head of government of the People’s Republic of China, which broke off diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1951. The only precedent of this type was the meeting between the Secretary for Relations with States Msgr. Paul Richard Gallagher and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, occurred in February 2020 in Munichon the sidelines of the Global Security Policy Conference.
Just while he was in Berlin for the international meeting of religions for peace promoted by the Community of Sant’Egidio, Cardinal Zuppi answered journalists’ questions about his mission in China, which Pope Francis had also spoken about openly. Deflecting the pressure of those asking for information on his departure, he said that “the times of the Holy See and the times of China are notoriously very long”. But he added that the paths to peace are sometimes “unpredictable and need the commitment and involvement of everyone and a great alliance for peace to push in the same direction”. He had specified, however, that peace “is never something that can be imposed by someone, it must be the peace chosen by the Ukrainians with the guarantees, commitment and effort of everyone”.
Despite being closely linked to the Vatican’s attempts to stop the war unleashed a year and a half ago by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Cardinal Zuppi’s trip undoubtedly also represents a step forward in relations between Beijing and the Holy See after the frictions of last months. And it comes significantly just a few days after hand extended again by Pope Francis to the Chinese authorities, during his apostolic trip to Ulan Bator.
However, another apparently smaller but no less significant signal, which arrived in these same hours from Belgium, also indicates a climate of greater relaxation. Just as Cardinal Zuppi is about to leave for Beijing, four bishops from mainland China (photo 2) are in Europe, where they arrived with the permission of the Beijing authorities. As reported, in fact, the Belgian Catholic agency Cathobel, from 7 to 9 September, four Chinese bishops visited Belgium at the invitation of Cardinal Jozef De Kesel, archbishop emeritus of Malines-Brussels and president of the Verbiest Foundation of Louvain, the study center of Scheut’s missionaries which has been promoting initiatives for over 40 years of exchange with the Church in China. The delegation included Msgr. Giuseppe Guo Gincai of Chengde and Msgr. Liu Xinghong of Anhui (two of the bishops from whom Pope Francis withdrew his excommunication with the 2018 Agreement), Msgr. Paolo Pei Junmin of Shenyang and Msgr. Francesco Cui Qingqi of Wuhan, the last bishop appointed according to the Agreement between the Chinese government and the Holy See, two years ago now.
The four bishops – Cathobel reports – have obtained authorization from Beijing to negotiate with the Verbiest Foundation to resume the exchange program after the suspension linked to Covid. The idea is to relaunch the month-long intensive training sessions for Chinese priests, religious and lay people that have been promoted since 2015 in Leuven on pastoral care, catechesis, social teaching and spirituality. Sessions that always ended with a pilgrimage to Rome to see the Pope.
In Belgium the Chinese bishops visited the tomb of Theofiel Verbiest, the founder of the Scheut missionaries and paid homage to the members of the institute who followed in the footsteps of their founder in the missions of northern China between 1865 and 1949: 252 of them are also buried in China. The prelates’ trip to Europe, however, will not be limited only to Belgium: Cathobel reports that in the next few days they will be in France, where Fr. Jean Charbonnier, of the Missions Etrangères de Paris, another great bridge builder with the Church in China. «These views – commented Father Jeroom Heyndrickx, of the Scheut missionaries, in Cathobel – are an important step on the path of dialogue and exchange, in full harmony with Pope Francis».