here is a strong desire for unity among the Chinese Bishops of the clandestine Church in respect to their confreres of the patriotic Church. In the last issue of the “Eglises d’Asie” (“Churches of Asia”), the Agency of Foreign Missions of Paris, a letter of Bishop Joseph Han Zhihai, clandestine Bishop of Lhanzou was published.
The structure of the mission of that period saw missionaries as itinerants traveling vast territories and document their missionary activities with notes that were destined to inform and illustrate the reality they encountered.
The Bishop, in the message sent to the diocese and made public even outside the diocese, underlines that it is “the moment” to have full union between the two branches of the Chinese Church and even to “respond” to the appeals for unity that come from the Pope. The document was made public during a meeting of study and dialog on the Chinese religious reality, which was held in September in Louvain, Belgium and was organized by the “Ferdinand Verbiest Foundation”: New particulars about the Chinese situation will be learned today, when the year of initiatives dedicated to China by the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions (P.I.M.E) begins.
In Milan, today Bishop Joseph Zen, S.D.B., Bishop of Hong Kong will speak on the subject of “The Church Today in China”, with a series of conference at the P.I.M.E. Center there will be The meeting begins the year dedicated to China which will have a number of cultural initiatives entitled, “Chinese Paths” from October 2003 to May 2004. There will be a Photographic Exhibit of Fr. Leone Nani during the century of his departure for China 1903-2003.
The missionary presence of P.I.M.E. in China goes back to the origins of the Institute and witness the interest it always had in Asian cultures. The structure of the mission of that period saw missionaries as itinerants traveling vast territories and document their missionary activities with notes that were destined to inform and illustrate the reality they encountered. The Ferdinand Verbiest Foundation of Louvain, directed by Fr. Jeroom Heyndrickx, is preparing for the Eighth International Symposium of the History of the Catholic Church in China, which will take place at the headquarters of the the Foundation from August 31 to September 3, 2004.
(From VID)