Vatican City, Sep 17, 2018 / 08:05 am (CNA).- Following reports that the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China could be about to sign an agreement on the appointment of bishops in the country, attention has turned to the role of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick in fostering Vatican-China relations over the last two decades.
Over 20 years, Archbishop McCarrick traveled to China on at least eight occasions, sometimes staying in a state-controlled Beijing seminary, often serving as an unofficial bridge between the Vatican and Chinese government-appointed bishops until 2016.
Prior to allegations of sexual abuse and harassment becoming public this summer, the former cardinal had been an outspoken proponent of a deal between Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Church under Pope Francis, according to Chinese reports.
“I see a lot of things happening that would really open many doors because President Xi and his government are concerned about things that Pope Francis is concerned about,” McCarrick told The Global Times, in an exclusive interview in Feb. 2016.
The interview quoted McCarrick as saying that the similarities between Pope Francis and Xi Jinping could be “a special gift for the world.”
The the state-approved Chinese newspaper also reported that McCarrick traveled to China in Feb. 2016 — “a trip in which the cardinal said he would visit some ‘old friends.’”
“His previous visits included meetings with Wang Zuo’an, head of the State Administration for Religious Affairs and late bishop Fu Tieshan, former president of Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China (BCCCC), an organization not recognized by the Holy See,” The Global Times reported.
In June 2014, David Gibson reported in the Washington Post that McCarrick had traveled to China “in the past year” for “sensitive talks on religious freedom.”
This detail aligns, in part, with the 11-page “testimony” of former apostolic nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. Viganò recounted a meeting with McCarrick in June 2013, during which Vigano claims he was told by McCarrick, “The pope received me yesterday, tomorrow I am going to China.”
McCarrick was hosted by the Beijing seminary during at least two trips to China, according to a 2006 State Department document made available via Wikileaks.
The vice-rector of a Communist-approved seminary, Fr. Shu-Jie Chen, described twice hosting McCarrick in an account found in a cable from Christopher Sandrolini, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See.
Chen described himself as “king” of the seminary, saying that he “could do what he wanted within its walls.”
Sandrolini also noted that the vice rector “downplayed persecution of the underground Church,” calling the underground church “uneducated” and “elderly.” He said that Chen seemed “unconcerned” that “evangelization was not an option for official religious personnel.
A cable from U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Francis Rooney in March 2006 noted that Archbishop Claudio Celli, who was at that time the Holy See’s principal China negotiator, insisted that McCarrick was not in a position to negotiate with China and that his visits to China were “unofficial.”
There appears to be a gap between McCarrick’s trips to China between 2006 and 2013, though McCarrick’s influence was still active.
In 2009, the archbishop had a message relayed to a friend in China through Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House of Representatives. Pelosi conveyed McCarrick’s greetings to Bishop Aloysius Jin of Shanghai, formerly a leading Chinese Jesuit.
“She [Pelosi] relayed Cardinal McCarrick’s good wishes to Bishop Jin. Bishop Jin said he and Cardinal McCarrick had exchanged visits, beginning when the latter was Bishop of Newark,” the State Department cable reads.
During McCarrick’s time as Archbishop of Newark, Aloysius Jin Luxian was not recognized as a bishop by the Vatican. He was ordained a coadjutor bishop of Shanghai without papal approval in 1985, his position was not recognized by the Vatican until 2004. Bishop Jin died in 2013.
A 2007 article in The Atlantic described the close friendship between McCarrick and Jin, and how McCarrick claimed to have relayed messages from the Chinese government-appointed bishop to the pope in the 1990s.
Both the State Department and Chinese media recorded a 1998 visit to China by Archbishop McCarrick. On that trip he was one of three American clerics to visit China to discuss religious freedom, meeting with Bishop Michael Fu Tieshan, vice-chairman of the Chinese Communist Party’s Standing Committee of the Chinese National People’s Congress.
Fu was made a bishop by Beijing 1979 without approval of the pope.
Chinese media reported that McCarrick paid a visit to the National Seminary in Beijing in 1998.
In Aug. 2, 2003, the South China Morning Post reported that McCarrick “spent three days in Beijing earlier this week on what was ostensibly a private visit.”
McCarrick was “the first cardinal from a western country to visit the mainland since relations between China and the Vatican turned frosty after a dispute over canonisation in October 2000,” the article continued.
In a Dec. 2003 State Department cable, U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Jim Nicholson wrote that Vatican Office Director for China Monsignor Gianfranco Rota-Graziosi “did not expect concrete improvement stemming from the informal trip last summer of Washington Cardinal McCarrick to China.”
On Sept. 14, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Holy See could be about to enter a deal with China which would include the recognition of seven illicitly consecrated bishops serving in the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association – a state-sponsored form of Catholicism whose leaders are chosen by Communist authorities.
Reports of the Holy See and Chinese government working towards a formal agreement on the appointment of bishops have been circulating since January, 2018. At the same time, China has launched an increasing crackdown on religious practice in the country, demolishing churches and harassing worshippers.
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I’m wondering why the Vatican thinks it necessary to parade an elderly and very sick man for everyone to gawk at. We get it that the Pope has been quite ill and near death. We pray for him as we would anyone in his state. But do we really need a full medical report daily or expect him to actively participate in the governance of a Church of over a billion? Let’s exercise some common sense. The Church will be just fine. We have thousands of bishops worldwide to shepherd Christ’s flock. Let the Pope get some rest behind the walls of the Vatican and stop this media spectacle of having him make public appearances.
I was wondering why the cameras behind him? What/why are they recording?
The cameras to shoot stills and video of crowd shots, as shown in this very article. One shot posted on the vaticannews website (if not pulled as bad PR) showed a horribly bloated and purple entire hand, some no doubt from needles as for purple, but this extended into fingers. No suprise on an old man with failing circulation.
Darker corners of the web were already wondering if he was dead or mentally incapacitated due to almost total blackout on photos. As for PR stunts, tops would be him in his condition wanting to be shoehorned into his Audi 500 for the ride to San Marta, an Audi as surely humble and unmodified as his humble San Marta hotel room…
where I have always thought his residence there was to dodge known or possible bugging of the papal apartments, his converting a significant chunk of San Marta giving him a known clean slate, and free to see those who might raise eyebrows, and same now, as he tries to make sure his agenda continues after his passing, including in how to influence selection of his successor.
… an Audi as surely humble and unmodified as his humble San Marta hotel room…..
Can’t make up my mind if you’re being ironic or if You’ve been among those taken in by the showboat humility.
Truly humble people do not trumpet their humility, or have a formerly excellent Vatican reference website converted almost entirely to news trumpeting that humility.
Praise God the Pope is recovering. 🙏
Yes but the only real recovery and the only recovery that matters is eternal life. We value life while we’re still living but death awaits us all and we can only hope for eternal life.
I’m sure glad when I was recovering from pneumonia years ago my doctor valued life. We take good health for granted until we can’t. Pneumonia takes even younger folks a couple months to recover from. God bless Pope Francis. He’s had a rough time.
He appears, unfortunately, still in a state of compromise, as visually indicated and by frequent informing by the assistant constantly by his side. Perhaps an effort by his cadres to continue to implement policy adjustments for whatever may transpire. Our prayers should be for his well being and God’s guidance for the Church.
He seemed responsive to some prompts, even to showing a negative response, seemingly saving oxygen thru limited motion and speech and clearly running out at the end and the camera cut away so they could give him oxygen….in short, he might be mentally alert, or might just be a brain damaged difficult patient, but will give the benefit of doubt for now that he still is trying to maintain his agenda.
Thanks Bob. I keep him in my prayers especially during Mass.
Amen, Father.
Some really uncharitable comments on here, were some of you saying the same thing when St John Paul II was in the Gemelli during the last months of his life twenty years ago. Praying for the Pope’s full recovery.
William, if by any chance you’re referring to my comments, I’ll say the following. I thought the same thing when St. John Paul II was wheeled to the window in his dying days. It’s not that imminent death is something to be ashamed of but a dying person ought not be made to pretend as if he’s still fully functional and on the job. The Pope deserves better.
Regan came to the window but he was apparently getting better, and had survived the attempt.
It looks like the Pontiff is nearing the end.
My comments are merely observations of a skinny older man with raft of health issues, seeing a fat older man with a raft of health issues such as poor circulation, lung infections unable to be knocked back by drugs due to drug effects leading to what appears to be renal failure going by the bloating, and who knows what else the man has going on in this “complex situation”. My prayer, as always, including for self, is that God’s will be done, and not mine. I pity him as a person, as no true Christian wishes to see anyone suffer, good man or evil man. His decline a valuable reminder to us all that we all come to this sooner or later, and often sooned than hoped or expected.
Sadly I don’t think the Pope is going to make it. I say this from personal experience with elderly loved ones who were hospitalized at an advanced age.