CHINA-HOLY SEE
from issue no. 09 - 2006
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The Truggio Convention
The path of realism
by Gianni Valente
The seventh European
Colloquium of Catholics on China (140 participants, among whom fifty
Chinese, including the auxiliary Bishop of Hong Kong, John Tong, and the
official of the Vatican Congregation of Propaganda Fide, Matthew King),
which took place from 6 to 10 September in Villa Sacro Cuore in Triuggio
under the judicious direction of the PIME missionary Giancarlo Politi, was
a successful attempt to describe the condition of the Chinese Catholic
Church by setting aside the anti-historical Manichean interpretations
deliberately circulated. Among the more appreciated papers, those from two
young Chinese priests are worthy of note. John Zhang, editor of the
publishing company “Fede” in the province of Hebei, documented
the pastoral and administrative problems deriving from mismatch between the
diocesan structure established by Pius XII in 1946 (still the reference
point of the Holy See) and that effectively operative in the field, shaped
over the past fifty years in line with the new borders of the territorial
units of the state administration. Stephen Chen, director of the Catholic
Center for Social Assistance in Xian, gave instead a picture of the
multifaceted social works backed by Catholic communities in the province of
Shaanxi, from the fifteen kindergartens and eighty clinics run by the nuns
to the help programs for AIDS sufferers, from the small-scale bookshops
inaugurated in dozens of parishes to the projects sponsored by the German
charitable organization “Miserior” to provide drinking water
for the inhabitants of rural areas.
The controversial node of relations between the Holy See, the Chinese Church and the Chinese government was dealt with, from various points of view, by the articulate presentations of the PIME missionary Gianni Criveller, by the Divine Word scholar Roman Malek and by Professor Agostino Giovagnoli.
At the opening of the Convention, Father Angelo Lazzarotto, another PIME missionary, gave a heartfelt commemoraion of the Italian minister Vittorino Colombo, a great worker for Rome-Beijing relations.
The controversial node of relations between the Holy See, the Chinese Church and the Chinese government was dealt with, from various points of view, by the articulate presentations of the PIME missionary Gianni Criveller, by the Divine Word scholar Roman Malek and by Professor Agostino Giovagnoli.
At the opening of the Convention, Father Angelo Lazzarotto, another PIME missionary, gave a heartfelt commemoraion of the Italian minister Vittorino Colombo, a great worker for Rome-Beijing relations.
