(ANS – Vatican City – September 27) – In the end,
Pope Francis could entrust only to Mary Help of Christians a mission so
important and delicate. On the occasion of the Provisional Agreement between
the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China, and at the conclusion of his
pastoral letter to the faithful in China, Pope Francis delivered into the care
of the Celestial Mother this further step of rapprochement between the Vatican
and Beijing. Pope Francis has paid homage every 24th of the month even as archbishop
of Buenos Aires to the Madonna of Don Bosco, the Virgin to whom the millions of
Catholics in China also are closely linked.
The Provisional Agreement arrives after long years of
preparatory work. “It is God’s time, which resembles Chinese time: it’s slow” Pope
Francis joked, but just a little, on his way back from Estonia to the Vatican.
The agreement has been a negotiation in which, as the Pope has
always explained, both parties have had to give up something. For some it is
also a source of “doubts and perplexities”: even the Pontiff admitted this in
his letter, perhaps because those who have endured for years the difficulties
and problems of living in the “underground Church” now are questioning “the
value of the sufferings they faced to live in fidelity to the Successor of
Peter.”
The Holy Father does not ignore those Catholics: “Such painful
experiences belong to the spiritual treasure of the Church in China and of the
whole People of God.” Yet he looks to China “as a land full of great opportunities
and to the Chinese people as the architect and guardian of an inestimable
heritage of culture and wisdom.”
On the specific theme of the appointment of bishops, the Pope
assures “that the nomination is from Rome; the appointment is by the Pope,” and
the dialog concerns the antecedent phase, the identification of the candidates.
In any case, the agreement represents a turning point for the Catholic Church
in China because for the first time, it introduces stable elements of
collaboration and because it proceeds in the direction of reconstituting the
full and visible unity of the Church.
“Dialog is a risk, but I prefer the risk to the sure defeat of
not talking,” the Holy Father had said months ago. And for the future, there is
always something to look up to: “Mary, Help of Christians, for China we ask you
for days of blessing and peace.” That is the conclusion of the prayer signed by
Pope Francis for this special mission.
America magazine offers interesting
parallels between the agreement just reached between the Holy See and
China, and the 1801 Concordat between the Holy See and Napoleon.
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