Talk about dirty politics within the Vatican! The Catholic Church is sucking up to the Chinese because China has over 1.3 billion people, and obviously the more people the Church can convert to Catholicism the better; strength in numbers as they say.
Consider this, isn’t it ironic that the Roman Catholic Church wants to “beautify” a Chinese astronomer, when Galileo, an Italian who lived from 1564 to 1642 (almost the identical time frame as the Chinese astronomer) has never been even remotely considered for this “distinguished honor” by the Vatican? Once again, talk about dirty politics!
The more I learn about the Catholic Church the more I realize the tentacles which this slimy organization has. This demonstrates just how blind the Catholic faithful are; they cannot see beyond the Church’s smokescreen. How pathetic is that? TGO
Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press
VATICAN CITY – The Vatican has put a Chinese Catholic scholar who lived nearly five centuries ago on track for beatification, a move intended to raise the profile of the church in a country that keeps a tight grip on all religious expression.
Paul Xu Guangqi, who lived from 1562 to 1633, was a scientist, astronomer and mathematician and collaborator of Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, himself a candidate for beatification.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the go-ahead for the beatification cause from the Vatican’s sainthood congregation was a “beautiful light of hope for China today and tomorrow.”
He said Xu’s “exemplary life” shows there is no contradiction in being both Chinese and Catholic. On the contrary, he told Vatican Radio, people can be both “great Chinese and upstanding Catholics.”
The announcement of the start of the beatification process came in a message to Chinese Catholics last week from a special Vatican commission set up to study problems that Catholics loyal to the pope face in China. It expressed its “sorrow for the trials you are undergoing” but said it “learned with joy” that the diocese of Shanghai can start the beatification cause.
There is no time limit on the beatification process, the last formal step before possible sainthood. It can take years, with the Vatican requiring what it considers a miracle based on the candidate’s intercession. Ricci’s cause officially began in 1984.
Pope Benedict XVI has made improving relations with China a priority of his foreign policy, but a key stumbling block has been the Vatican’s insistence on the pope’s right to appoint bishops as he does elsewhere in the world. Beijing’s communist rulers see it as interference by a foreign entity in Chinese affairs.
China forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951. Only state-backed churches are recognized, although millions of Chinese belong to unofficial congregations loyal to Rome.
There’s been no official reaction to the Xu announcement, which went little noticed at the time.
It was quite different in 2000, when Pope John Paul II declared sainthood for 120 Chinese and foreign missionaries killed in the church’s five-century struggle in China. Beijing called them “evildoing sinners” and their canonization “an open insult.”
Naming of the church’s first Chinese saints was another setback to attempts to normalize relations.
