Asia Times: Pope apologizes to China and calls for ties


	October 26, 2001	atimes.com

China

Pope apologizes to China and calls for ties
By Francesco Sisci

BEIJING - Pope John Paul II has appealed for the normalization of relations between China and the Vatican and asked for "forgiveness and understanding" for the errors of missionaries in colonial times.

Speaking on Wednesday, he also said the Church had a keen desire to offer "her humble and selfless service" for the good of all Chinese people.

On June 1, Asia Times Online carried a Heartland article by Ren Yanli, director of the Center of Research on Christianity of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Saints, imperialists, the Catholic Church and China). Professor Ren argued that the Chinese people felt somewhat wronged because the Pope had not asked for forgiveness by the Chinese for the errors made in the name of Christianity during colonial times.

The article came after the controversial canonization by the Vatican of 120 Chinese saints on October 1 - China's National Day - last year. Beijing objected to the choice of date, explaining that to glorify people who were killed because of their defiance of Chinese rule was an incitement to Chinese Catholics to defy the present Chinese rule. The loyalty of Chinese Catholics, in other words, would be split between the Pope and China. The canonization on that date touched an open wound between Beijing and the Holy See: the issue of the "official" Catholics, recognizing Beijing, and the underground Catholics, recognizing the Vatican. The canonizations were construed by Beijing and many official Catholics as encouraging the underground movement.

The Pope's apology, coming out of a seminar in Rome on Matteo Ricci, the most famous Italian in China, apparently recognizes that the canonizations were a political mistake. Ricci was in fact just the opposite of those 120 martyrs. He was a Westerner who first converted to "Chineseness" and then tried to convert the Chinese to his faith. His tomb is still preserved in the courtyard of the Beijing Party School, where it has weathered the fury of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution and the many other revolutions in China since his death in Beijing in 1610.

To the Chinese he is the examplar of how Westerners should behave, and by choosing the occasion of the seminar to make his statement, the Pope also acknowledged his stature.

However, factors in the relationship between China and the Vatican that previously existed no longer hold now. Last year, before the canonizations, China was ready to normalize ties with the Vatican. Beijing thought that this would help China in its dealings with the Falungong, by proving to the world that Beijing did not object to the Falungong because it was a religion, but because it was a sect with strong political ambitions. Beijing also hoped the Vatican would help it in its dealings with the United States, where Catholicism is the single largest faith. And finally, Beijing expected that ties would help in further isolating Taiwan, as the Holy See is the most important of the 27 governments still recognizing the island.

By the time of the Pope's speech, the situation had changed on all three fronts. The Falungong threat is largely subdued, as is Beijing's international embarrassment. China is having a kind of honeymoon with the US due to the "war against terrorism" in Afghanistan, and Taiwan is so isolated that its boycott of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum last week went largely unnoticed.

On the other hand, the Chinese leadership has its hands full. The party congress due in September or October next year demands full attention, with its complex agenda of personnel changes. It is not yet clear if the top leader himself, Jiang Zemin, will completely retire or hold some position. In other words, Beijing feels there is little external urgency to press on with the Vatican issue and its priorities now are different.

To top it all, after last year's canonizations, some Chinese experts have argued the inherent dangers of a relationship with the Vatican. The Vatican is no ordinary state. In a normal bilateral relations, both states have pressure points - "you won't import my beef, I won't import your poultry". There is a bond of interests that forces the two countries to behave within some limits. With the Vatican, this bond doesn't exist. If China were to feel the Vatican was pushing too much, what could it do? At most, it could react against the Chinese Catholics - but they, in Beijing's eyes, are first and foremost Chinese, and to act against them would be like Beijing slapping its own face.

On the other hand, the Pope's gesture of reconciliation can't be ignored by Beijing, and there would also be very positive international reaction if China were to normalize ties with the head of the world's largest religion. Indeed, by Thursday afternoon, China had given its first, cautious, but positive, reaction the Pope's speech. It stated that it was willing to normalize ties as soon as possible, but that the speech had to go through "research", or yanjiu - a Chinese stock phrase for the complicated process of meetings and discussions by different departments involved with the issue. The two main parties involved in this case are the Foreign Ministry and the United Front, the party department in charge of religious affairs. The United Front has been particularly wary of normalization of ties, afraid that this could put China into difficult situations.

The Pope whose health is failing, has a last wish: to visit China before his death. Perhaps a trip to China, without normalization of ties, could indicate a desire by both sides to be more understanding toward each other, and could be the first compromise that would help some of the more combative of China's 4 million underground Catholics to reconcile themselves with the Beijing government.

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