HK vital bridge between mainland and Holy See
Despite being a Chinese city under British rule until just 10 years ago, Hong Kong has long been a key player in bridging the Sino-Vatican divide.
While seldom involved in direct diplomatic matters, the Hong Kong Catholic Diocese has served as a channel that helped development of the church on the mainland and also helped increased communication between both sides.
Hong Kong's role as a bridge between the Vatican and Beijing was best described by former Vatican foreign minister Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo in an interview last year.
'The peaceful religious activity of the diocese of Hong Kong, its harmonious presence in the life of this great and hard-working metropolis, should constitute an example that could break down the walls of prejudice and fear towards the Catholic Church,' Archbishop Lajolo said.
The latest efforts to bring more freedom to mainland Catholics by Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, who advises Pope Benedict on the church's China policy, reflected the decades of hard work by the clergy and faithful in Hong Kong.
Untouched by the turmoil experienced by the mainland clergy and faithful following the communists' taking of power in 1949, Hong Kong became a haven for missionaries and Chinese priests fleeing the mainland after Beijing's rejection of ties with the Vatican.
After the church emerged in the early 1980s from the crackdown on religions on the mainland, Hong Kong Catholics reached out to their counterparts with material help to rebuild churches and theological knowledge. Many Hong Kong clerics, including the then Father Zen, a theologian in the Catholic order of Salesians of Don Bosco, spent years helping to train mainland priests.
The Holy Spirit Seminary in Hong Kong was a fertile field for a large number of mainland priests to further their spiritual studies, and get in touch with the outside world.
The Hong Kong diocese also became a hub for analysing the situation of the mainland church.
The late cardinal John Baptist Wu Cheng-chung created the Holy Spirit Study Centre in 1980, with an aim to becoming a platform to facilitate exchanges between mainland Catholics and the church.
The centre's wealth of information about the mainland church and its extensive network of mainland bishops and priests formed one of the main reference bases for the Vatican in its China policy-making.
Cardinal Wu himself was also instrumental in positioning the Hong Kong diocese as a bridge between the two sides. In his pastoral letter of 1989, he urged Hong Kong Catholics to care for the welfare of their mainland counterparts.
Hong Kong is also home to the low-key Holy See Study Mission, which monitors the mainland church's developments.
