What was Sr. Lucia’s advice after Fatima visions? Pray. Everyday.

Pope Francis delivers a video message to the conference “100 Years Since the ‘Concilium Sinense’” at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. / Credit: Fabio Gonnella/EWTN

Rome Newsroom, May 21, 2024 / 13:57 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis has praised the Catholic Church’s first council in China 100 years ago as “an authentic synodal journey” that opened the way for the Church in China “to increasingly have a Chinese face.”

In a video message to a conference in Rome on the Catholic Church in China, the pope noted that Chinese Catholics have endured “times of patience and trial” in the past century.

“The Lord in China has safeguarded the faith of the people of God along the way. And the faith of God’s people has been the compass that has shown the way throughout this time,” Pope Francis said in the May 21 address.

The pope pointed to a Church council that took place in Shanghai 25 years before the Chinese Communist Revolution as an example of a moment when “the communion between the Holy See and the Church in China manifested its fruits, fruits of good for all the Chinese people.” 

The 1924 council, called the Primum Concilium Sinense, brought together 105 Catholic missionaries, bishops, and Chinese Catholics to establish a framework for a native Chinese hierarchy.

“The Fathers gathered in the Concilium Sinense lived an authentically synodal experience and made important decisions together,” Pope Francis said.

“Remembering the Council of Shanghai can also suggest today new paths to the entire Church and open paths to be undertaken with boldness to proclaim and bear witness to the Gospel in the present,” he added. 

Among the crowd listening to the pope’s video message were representatives from the People’s Republic of China, including Bishop Shen Bin of Shanghai, who was unilaterally installed by Chinese authorities as bishop of Shanghai in April 2023 without a papal mandate, thereby breaking the terms of the Vatican-China deal. Pope Francis confirmed his appointment in July 2023.

The Holy See first entered into a provisional two-year agreement with Beijing on the appointment of bishops in 2018, which has since been renewed twice and is again up for renewal this fall. 

Pope Francis opted not to speak of the Vatican’s diplomatic efforts with Beijing or religious freedom in China in his message but said that Chinese Catholics today “bear witness to their faith through works of mercy and charity, and in their witness they give a real contribution to the harmony of social coexistence.”

A large statue of Our Lady of Sheshan stood on the pope’s desk as he spoke. The pope noted that during the month of May many Chinese Catholics usually go on pilgrimage to the Marian Shrine of Sheshan, located near Shanghai.

“I too ideally climb the hill of Sheshan, and let us all together entrust to Mary, Help of Christians, our brothers and sisters in the faith who are in China, all the Chinese people, and all our poor world, asking for her intercession, so that peace may always win everywhere,” Pope Francis said.

Following the pope’s message, Shen Bin delivered a 15-minute speech in Chinese to the packed auditorium of the Pontifical Urban University on the Janiculum Hill overlooking St. Peter’s Basilica.

The Chinese bishop offered a different interpretation of the 1924 council from the pope in his speech, saying that “the Council of Shanghai did not lead to an immediate and radical change in the Church in China,” adding that by the 1949 Communist Revolution “only 29 of China’s 137 dioceses had Chinese bishops, and only three of 20 archbishops were Chinese.”

“The Catholic Church in China had not really freed itself from foreign powers to become a work led by Chinese Christians and had not yet managed to shed the label of ‘foreign religion,’” he said.

Shen Bin, who has held leadership positions in the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association established by the Chinese Communist Party and under the control of the United Front Work Department, went on to defend Beijing’s religious freedom record and underlined the need for the Church in China to “follow a path of sinicization.”

“The policy of religious freedom implemented by the Chinese government has no interest in changing the Catholic faith but only hopes that the Catholic clergy and faithful will defend the interests of the Chinese people and free themselves from the control of foreign powers,” Shen Bin said in his speech.

“Today the Chinese people are carrying out the great rebirth of the Chinese nation in a global way with Chinese-style modernization, and the Catholic Church in China must move in the same direction, following a path of sinicization that is in line with Chinese society and culture today,” the Shanghai bishop added.

The conference, titled “100 Years Since the ‘Concilium Sinense’: Between History and the Present,” was held in Chinese and Italian in the Great Hall of the Pontifical Urban University. The Pastoral Commission for China and Agenzia Fides, the information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies, organized the conference, which featured Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as speakers.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the conference, Parolin said the Holy See would like to increase and deepen its contacts in China.

“We have been hoping for a long time now to have a stable presence in China, even if initially it may not have the form of a papal representation of an apostolic nunciature,” Parolin said.

[…]

Ottawa, Canada, Mar 12, 2021 / 05:18 pm (CNA).- Canada’s vulnerable populations are at risk due to Bill C-7’s expansion of euthanasia and assisted suicide to those with disabling, non-terminal conditions including mental illness, a member of the Canadian parliament has said.

An amended version of Bill C-7 passed the Canadian House of Commons March 11 by a vote of 180-149. Should the bill be approved by the Senate, which is likely, Canada’s euthanasia and assisted suicide laws will become some of the most permissible in the world.

“Bill C-7 is legislation that was a purported response to a Quebec superior court decision called ‘Truchon'”, Conservative MP Michael Cooper told CNA March 12. 

“In the Truchon decision, the judge determined that the ‘reasonably foreseeable’ criteria–that death must be reasonably foreseeable in order to qualify for medical assistance in dying–contravened Canada’s charter of rights and freedoms,” he explained.

In the case, Jean Truchon, a Quebec man who had cerebral palsy, filed suit after his request to end his life was denied as his condition was not terminal.

A judge ruled that Truchon and his co-plaintiff Nicole Gladu, who has post-polio syndrome, could not be denied a euthanasia or assisted suicide if they wished to end their lives, and that MAiD should be available to Canadians without terminal conditions.

Truchon received MAiD in April 2020. Gladu is still alive.

Cooper told CNA that “the normal course of action” following a court’s action such as the Truchon decision, “would have been the attorney general to have appealed the decision.”

“This, after all, was a lower court decision of one judge that was not binding on any courts in any other provinces. Indeed, it’s not binding on any upper court in the province of Quebec,” he said. Given that the Truchon decision was made “a mere three and a half years” following the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada, Cooper believes the attorney general should have appealed the decision.

“It’s the responsibility of the attorney general to defend the laws passed by parliament,” said Cooper. “And that would’ve meant appealing the decision, taking a decision if necessary all the way to the Supreme Court. That very least would have provided clarity in the law.”

Instead, the Canadian federal government announced that the decision would not be appealed, and new laws will take effect in Quebec in April. Parliament was instructed to write a law codifying the decision. Bill C-7 was introduced in parliament Feb. 23, 2020.

Initially, the bill would “remove the requirement for a person’s natural death to be reasonably foreseeable in order to be eligible” for euthanasia or assisted suicide and would “introduce a two-track approach to procedural safeguards” depending on if a person’s natural death is “reasonably foreseeable.”

The Senate, which has the ability to propose amendments to legislation, received the bill after it passed on a second reading in the House of Commons. The Senate introduced “radical” amendments to the bill, including one where euthanasia or assisted suicide would be permitted for people with mental illness as the sole underlying cause for ending their lives.

That amendment passed.

“The government has effectively rewritten the bill to something far more expansive than it was a year ago,” said Cooper.

Cooper was critical of the speed in which the legislation moved with the new amendments.
“I mean, this is a case where the government has proceeded with this radical expansion [of MAiD] absent a meaningful parliamentary study, absent a consensus amongst professionals, amongst experts and, in the face of leading mental health professionals who say the persons suffering from mental illness will prematurely end their lives,” he said. 

“It’s the height of recklessness on the part of the government,” said Cooper.

Once the bill has received Royal Assent, it will become law. Cooper said this is likely to happen before the end of the month, as a stay issued by the Quebec court will expire March 26.

Disability activists in Canada have been among the most vocally opposed to the passage of Bill C-7 and the expansion of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Over 120 disability groups have spoken out against the bill, saying that the bill amounts to coercion for people with disabilities to end their lives.

Disability Filibuster, an organization of Canadians with disabilities and their allies who are opposed to Bill C-7, noted that the day the bill was passed–March 11, 2021–was also the tenth anniversary of Canada ratifying the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

“Bill C-7 expands Medical Assistance in Dying beyond those who are actually dying, but only for persons with a disabling medical condition,” said Disability Filibuster’s website.

“The Bill, and its ableist subtext have already been harmful and traumatizing for a great many disabled people in Canada.”

[…]

CNA Staff, May 28, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- The Vatican has ordered the prominent Italian Catholic layman Enzo Bianchi to leave the monastery he founded in 1965.

The Holy See made the ruling in a decree dated May 13, signed by Vatican Secretary of Stat… […]