Editorial | Vatican deal gets off to promising start
- It may have taken the Pope nearly a year to confirm a bishop under an agreement with Beijing, but it is still cause for celebration
Whatever Pope Francis comes to be remembered for, it will always include two landmark events in the Catholic Church’s fraught relationship with China’s communist rulers, who broke off diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1951.
The first was a deal sealed with Beijing last September, after a decade of negotiations, for the appointment of bishops who would be recognised by both the Vatican and Beijing. The second is the pope’s approval for the consecration of the first Chinese bishop to be installed under the agreement.
It has taken nearly a year since the deal was struck for the Vatican to confirmMonsignor Antonio Yao Shun as bishop of Jining in Inner Mongolia.
Despite the wait, that surely is reason for celebrations among the 12 million Chinese Catholics divided between the state-supervised Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and an underground church that swears loyalty to the Vatican, and a positive sign for greater religious freedom.
However, as a Vatican spokesman said at the time of the accord, it is “not the end of a process, but the beginning”.