More than 40 years after the Columban Fathers were expelled from China, the first delegation of Irish Catholic clergy has visited the communist-ruled country and has found the situation regarding religious freedom more complex than anticipated.
The 12-member group, led by the Bishop of Killaloe, Dr William Walsh, included two Columban priests and the grand-nephew of Father Edward Galvin, founder of the Columban Fathers, also known as the Maynooth Mission to China.
"We were trying to inform ourselves better in regard to the [Catholic] church in China, and in some ways to show solidarity with the church in China," said Dr Walsh, before the delegation returned to Ireland yesterday.
The experience had been an "eye-opener" for him, he said.
The 16-day tour took the party to Hong Kong, Wuhan, Xi'an, Taiyuan and Beijing. They visited churches and seminaries and met Catholic bishops approved by the Beijing government, including Bishop Michael Fu Tieshan, chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.
The delegation had no official contact with members of the underground Catholic Church, which worships in private houses and whose members pledge allegiance to the Vatican.
The Patriotic Association does not recognise the authority of the Pope in the selection of bishops but members enjoy informal contacts with Catholic Church leaders outside China.
"The situation is not black and white, it was much more complex than I had anticipated," said Dr Walsh, who stressed that the delegation, put together by the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland, was not representing the Irish Hierarchy and that it was "careful not to take sides, and to respect the civil authorities".
He said: "Sometimes it can be just as heroic to live with ambivalence as it can be to make great sacrifices to pursue a very definite clear and distinct line." Many of the people they met had suffered a great deal over the past 40 to 50 years but they detected no sense of hostility or regrets.
"We saw many impressive examples of the local church, both official and those who had no contact with Rome, and some who had contact with Rome and yet were on very good working relationship with the official religious affairs bureau.
"Obviously the Chinese have quite an extraordinary facility to see both points of view and perhaps close their eyes. I would have the impression that the sort of thing that happens is `I know what you are doing but as long as you don't say it, that's all right'. "
He was impressed by the youth and vigour of the Catholic Church in China, citing expansion plans at the national seminary in Beijing.
The most emotional moment was in Hanyang city on the Yangtze River, where in 1918 the Vatican "set apart" an area the size of Connacht with a population of five million for the Columban Fathers to establish an Irish mission.
The driving force was Father Galvin, later Bishop Galvin, from Clodha, Co Cork. Before he was ordered to leave in 1954, he had built a cathedral and set up an order of Chinese nuns. The delegation visited the cathedral and met two surviving nuns, now in their 80s, who remembered Bishop Galvin.
"That was very special, it reaffirmed the link in some way," said Dr Walsh. "It was very emotional for Father Michael Kelleher, seeing on the wall inscribed in Latin that the cathedral was built by his grand-uncle."
Father Kelleher, from the Cork and Ross diocese, said: "All the places I had heard about and stories I had heard became real: the building and the house behind it and the little orchard they had. It was like the gap of time slipped away."
It had been very moving to meet the two sisters who were left behind trying to survive when the Columbans left. They had suffered greatly but he got a feeling that the nuns were now "coming out of that".
He felt he was "reconnecting" with two women who had "travelled a bit of the road" with people from Ireland and who "heard something with their heart, they have never let it go and they are hoping to see the next generation picking up from them".
The type of mission which Bishop Galvin led was concerned with "saving souls and black babies" and no longer exists, Father Kelleher said.
"In fact, that mission would have been associated with foreigners who had come to China and abused this country and took so much from it. I didn't fully understand the depth of that until I came here and met Chinese people and they talked about the Opium Wars and what was done to this country.
"We now would have an ambition to learn from the people we go to and be enriched by their culture."
The Irish Columbans still maintain a presence in China through providing teachers of English, said Dr Walsh. The invitation to the Irish churchmen followed a visit to Ireland by Bishop Bernardin Dong of Hankou.
Bishop Michael Fu recently urged Pope John Paul to cut ties with Taiwan and to recognise communist China to enable the establishment of relations between the Vatican and state-sanctioned Chinese believers, who number four to five million.
Bishop Fu said that while the official Chinese Catholic church does not recognise the Vatican's authority, "we are completely in accord with the Pope on matters of faith and doctrine, and Chinese Catholics pray for the Pope in masses in all churches."