CHINA: Hong Kong's recently appointed cardinal, Joseph Zen, has criticised a Chinese government decision to appoint two bishops this year without Vatican approval, but said the process of introducing greater religious freedom was gathering pace in China and the situation for the clergy there was improving.
Communist China threw out foreign clergy in the 1950s and severed ties with the Vatican. Since then it has steadfastly refused to allow Catholics to recognise the authority of the Pope and instead they have to join the state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which has five million members. The Vatican estimates that about eight million Chinese Catholics worship secretly in "underground churches" not recognised by the government.
Relations between the Vatican and Beijing reached a new low in the spring when Pope Benedict censured China publicly after the Catholic Patriotic Association installed two bishops without the Holy See's approval, calling it "a grave violation of religious freedom".
However, an uncharacteristically mild response by the Chinese authorities to what was a strongly worded Vatican statement was a sign of differing approaches between what the state-backed church was doing and what the top leadership was planning more broadly.
"China is always a land of mysteries, you never know who is doing what. It seems to us that many things, such as the illegitimate ordinations, are being undertaken at the lower level by the Patriotic Association," Cardinal Zen, the most senior representative of the Roman Catholic Church in China and an outspoken defender of religious freedom and civil rights, said.
"Maybe they don't have the full support of the higher level, where there is a certain support with a watching attitude."
The ordinations called into question a tacit agreement where only priests in the state-backed church with a favourable attitude toward the Vatican could be elevated to bishop.
A thoughtful, energetic cleric, Cardinal Zen has long been a thorn in the side of the state-run church in China.
"The Catholic Patriotic Association is really angry with me. They know my position and they know the Holy Father listens to what I say in this part of the world. But I don't think that's the position of the higher authorities. They have question marks on me but don't think I'm an enemy," he said.
The Vatican is one of the few countries in the world which gives diplomatic recognition to Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province, and this is a key irritant to relations between the Holy See and Beijing. Beijing also wants a veto over who the Vatican appoints as bishop.
Cardinal Zen said there could be some movement on some of the key issues for Beijing - switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing and giving the government a say in the appointment of bishops, but he said the association would have to be reformed.
"Sometimes we try to be optimistic. When China says our two conditions for normalisation are no big difficulty, we say we are ready to switch diplomatic recognition and compromise about the bishops. But when you see the whole picture, a bigger problem is the Patriotic Association and the illegitimate ordinations," he said.
The Catholic Church has a long history in China, and also a long history of conflict with the authorities - the Jesuits were thwarted in a bid to spread Catholicism in China in the 17th century by a row with the Ming emperors over how to marry religion and local traditions.
A delegation from the Vatican came to Beijing for a week recently, headed by Archbishop Claudio Celli, to discuss closer relations, although the Vatican itself kept quiet about the meeting. The secret talks yielded little of substance, but at least seem to have opened a dialogue.
Cardinal Zen has close links with both the government-supervised churches and the "underground" churches, which are closely watched and whose bishops and priests are often arrested.
He said that the best way to improve the situation for the underground church was for the current talks to be successful.
Recent events such as the Buddhist Congress in Hangzhou and a meeting in Beijing about Christian religions and society, which invited Protestants and Catholics from Hong Kong, were a sign of hope and growing tolerance, the cardinal said.
"All these things are going in one direction. But maybe it will still take some time. You cannot brush away 50 years of history," he added.