Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong said he was “disappointed and angry” over a report released by German broadcaster Deutsche Welle on the controversial deal between Beijing and the Vatican.
Due to pressure from the Chinese government, eight Catholic nuns have reportedly been forced to leave their convent in the northern province of Shanxi. Their current whereabouts have not been reported.
China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs ordered that only trips organized by the state-sanctioned Islamic Association of China will be permitted.
The United States joined 38 other countries Tuesday in signing a joint statement to the United Nations condemning Chinese human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and requesting the United Nations investigate the situation.
A spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wang Wenbin, has underscored the country’s insistence that Taiwan not be recognized as a sovereign nation in response to a question on the island democracy’s relations with the Holy See.
Chinese authorities have reportedly abducted a Catholic priest in the Diocese of Mindong in Fujian on the south-east coast of China and has since been detained in an unknown location.
The Vatican expects to renew its interim deal with China on the appointment of bishops, as part of efforts to “normalize” the life of the Catholic Church in China, Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said Monday.
Religious freedom must be the result of any renewed Vatican agreement with China, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom emphasized on Tuesday, noting that underground Catholics in the country remained “persecuted.”
Hospitals and medical facilities in China’s Xinjiang region were allegedly forced to strictly implement government family-planning policies by aborting babies born “in excess of family planning limits.”
A Catholic bishop in China has denied that the government plans to tear down his cathedral, after local Catholics expressed concern at Communist authorities taking over land belonging to the diocese.
State-sponsored hackers have reportedly targeted Vatican computer networks in an attempt to give China an advantage in negotiations to renew a provisional deal with the Holy See.
Asian lawmakers are among the more than 600 elected officials from 30 countries who have called on China’s communist rulers to immediately halt the “systematic and brutal campaign to ‘eradicate’ the spiritual discipline of Falun Gong.”