European Christians to the aid of China’s young Church

at AsiaNews.it

First part:

Triuggio (AsiaNews) – The Church in China, official and underground is more alive than ever. It is a Church that suffers and evangelizes, without waiting for diplomatic ties between China and the Vatican as a panacea. Although it is trampled by controls, arrests, and persecutions, it is growing at the rate of 150,000 adult baptisms per year. All this is taking place while the government confiscates property of the official Church and seeks to annihilate underground priests, who are forced to sleep in a different place every night to avoid capture. Even amid imprisonment, poverty and suppression, it manages to produce and spread theology correspondence courses; in cities it preaches the Gospel via computer and compact discs; in universities, Christian personalities discuss modern social problems with intellectuals: economic development, pollution and the crisis sparked by materialism.

This is the image that emerged from the European Catholic China Europe Colloquium (ECCC) held in Triuggio from 6 to 10 September. Around 200 people from China and the Catholic, missionary world participated in the meeting. Mgr John Tong, auxiliary bishop of Hong Kong, was among leading representatives of the Asian world together with Orthodox personalities from the Moscow Patriarchate, and participants from the Protestant world. Among Italians who attended were Mgr Luigi Bressan, archbishop of Trento and president of the Episcopal Commission for Evangelization; Mgr Giovanni Giudici, bishop of Pavia, Mgr Angelo Mascheroni, auxiliary bishop of Milan, representative of Cardinal Tettamanzi, archbishop of the diocese hosting the meeting.

This year, the colloquium marked the seventh time it was held. An initiative launched informally in 1992 thanks to some European missionaries’ interest and passion for China, little by little it became a reference point for ties between European Churches and the Church in China.

But the renewal of ties between European and Chinese Christians dates back almost 25 years, to the time after the death of Mao Zedong and the first timid overtures of Deng Xiaoping. This year’s theme was precisely: “25 years of encounter with the Church in China: Evaluation looking to the future”.