Vatican, China at Odds Over Bishop

Planned Ordination by State Church Imperils Talks

BEIJING, April 29 -- China's state-sanctioned Roman Catholic Church will install a new bishop opposed by the Vatican on Sunday, potentially damaging efforts to restore official ties between the state and the church, a Vatican-linked news agency reported.

Hong Kong's Catholic diocese, which is under Vatican jurisdiction, protested the planned ordination Saturday.

The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association will ordain Ma Yinglin as bishop of the city of Kunming in the southwestern province of Yunnan, Rome-based AsiaNews said Friday.

News of the ordination comes as Chinese-Vatican talks on resuming ties appear to be entering a substantive phase.

AsiaNews said the Vatican opposes Ma because he is too close to the official Chinese church's leaders and has little pastoral experience. It said the Holy See had asked that Ma's ordination be delayed.

"With this latest showdown the Patriotic Association is aiming in fact to destroy rapprochement between Beijing and the Holy See," AsiaNews said.

The association's vice chairman, Liu Bainian, said the onus was on the Vatican to improve relations.

"This is a concrete test," he said in a phone interview with Hong Kong's ATV television station. "If they oppose the ordainment of Ma Yinglin, it would affect the improvement of Sino-Vatican relations."

He also told Hong Kong radio station RTHK that the official Chinese church was acting in the interests of the faithful while Sino-Vatican ties were still being sorted out.

Hong Kong's Catholic Church said in a statement Saturday it had sent a message to the Kunming church asking it to cancel Ma's ordination ceremony because the Vatican had not approved it.

Hong Kong, a former British colony now governed by China, still enjoys religious freedom.

According to the statement, Hong Kong's Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun believes that "anyone who pressures clergy to carry out a ceremony without the Holy See's approval is intentionally sabotaging Sino-Vatican negotiations."

Zen urged Chinese leaders to stop such "violent actions," the statement said.

An operator answering the phone at the Patriotic Association said its leaders had left for Yunnan and no one was available for comment. A call to the Chinese Foreign Ministry rang unanswered.

China and the Vatican cut ties in 1951. Catholics on the mainland are allowed to worship only at churches run by the Patriotic Association, but millions belong to underground churches loyal to the Vatican.

Those who meet in such churches are frequently harassed, fined and sometimes sent to labor camps.