Pray for the Church in China

John Allen, Vatican correspondent of the National Catholic Reporter writes in the Wall Street Journal (paid subs reqd.)

Church and (Communist) State

When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, this historical resentment, combined with the Vatican's ties to the Chinese nationalists in Taiwan, made relations between Rome and Beijing impossible.

Pope John Paul II tried hard to break that stalemate. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's secretary of state, famously said in 1999 that his boss would move the Vatican embassy from Taiwan to the mainland "not tomorrow morning, but tonight," if only the Beijing government would negotiate.

I want to say that over time, my views here have changed. I had believed that the Vatican diplomats were prepared to sell the faithful, Underground Church, down the river. I believe that Pope Benedict is not going to let that happen. The article continues:

The pope's foremost concern is to defend the basic human rights of the estimated 13 million Catholics on the mainland. This isn't a negligible issue. While antireligious persecution today is nowhere near as severe as in the heyday of the Cultural Revolution -- when all religions were persecuted, not just Catholics -- believers who don't worship through state-approved organizations do so at their peril.

The Cardinal Kung Foundation, an activist group, estimates that there are seven Catholic bishops in China currently in prison, 10 under house arrest and one in hiding -- not to mention 23 priests either in jails or forced labor camps. To put this into perspective, official Chinese statistics put the total number of Catholic bishops in the country at 69, with some 5,000 priests, though perhaps as many as 40 "underground" bishops are not counted in those numbers.

As I wrote in the title, please pray for these Catholics. The 21st Century should be a century with many saints who die after living full lives and not a century of martyrs.