“In China, the faith guarded by the people of God shows the way”

In a video message to a Conference held in Rome at the Urbaniana University with presence from the People’s Republic of China on the history and present of the Church in China on the centenary of the Shanghai Council. “Those who follow Jesus love peace and are together with all those who work for peace.”

Vatican City () – The path of the Church in China has gone through times “of patience and trial”, but it has been the “faith of the people of God that has shown the way”. And it is also the path for the testimony of Catholics who “in communion with the Bishop of Rome, walk in the present time” in China. Aware that “those who follow Jesus love peace, and are together with all those who work for peace, at a time when we see inhuman forces at work that seem to want to accelerate the end of the world.”

Pope Francis said this in a video message broadcast today on the occasion of the day promoted by the Pontifical Urbaniana University and Fides Agency on the centenary of the Concilium Sinense, the first and so far only Council of the Chinese Catholic Church, which took place in Shanghai. between May and June 1924. A day that brought together scholars and ecclesiastics, many of them from mainland China, to reflect on the history of this event, but also on its implications for the Church in China today. In this sense, the presence in Rome of the bishop of Shanghai, Monsignor Joseph Shen Bin, who presides over the Council of Chinese Bishops, an “official” body recognized by the Beijing government (but not as such by the Holy See), is significant.

In the video message, Pope Francis spoke with a reproduction of Our Lady of Sheshan, venerated in China, at his side. He explained that the centenary of the Shanghai Council “represents for many reasons a precious occasion”, the memory of which “can also suggest today to the entire Church new paths and open paths to tread boldly to announce and witness to the Gospel in the present.”

«The Fathers gathered at the Concilium Sinense – the Pope recalled – almost all came from distant countries, and before the Council many of them were not yet willing to consider the possibility of entrusting the leadership of the dioceses to priests and bishops born in China. Then, gathered at the Council, everyone made a true synodal journey and signed the provisions that opened new ways for the Church, including Catholic China, to increasingly have a Chinese face. They recognized that this was the step that had to be taken, because the announcement of Christ’s salvation can only reach each human community and each person if it speaks in his native language. In this “they followed in the footsteps of great missionaries, such as Father Matteo Ricci-Lì Mǎdòu; “they set out in the furrow opened by the apostle Paul, when he preached that it is necessary to do everything to everyone to announce and bear witness to the risen Christ.”

Citing the fundamental work of Archbishop Celso Costantini, the first Apostolic Delegate in China, who was the great organizer and leader of this historic event, Pope Francis stressed that the Shanghai Council “was not about “changing strategy”, but about follow the paths most in line with the nature of the Church and its mission. Trusting only in the grace of Christ himself and in the attractiveness of him. The participants in the first Concilium Sinense looked to the future. And its future is our present.

“The path of the Church throughout history has passed and passes through unforeseen paths, even through times of patience and trial,” the Pontiff further observed, “The Lord, in China, has preserved the faith of the people of God along the path. And the faith of the people of God has been the compass that has indicated the path throughout this time, before and after the Shanghai Council, until today. In the context in which they live, Chinese Christians “give witness to their faith also with works of mercy and charity, and with their testimony they truly contribute to the harmony of social coexistence, to the construction of the common home.”

“Those who follow Jesus love peace – continued Pope Francis – and are together with all those who work for peace, at a time when we see inhuman forces at work that seem to want to accelerate the end of the world.”

Finally, the Pontiff recalled how precisely on these days “many of our Chinese brothers and sisters make pilgrimages to the Shrine of Sheshan, to entrust their prayers and hopes to the intercession of the Mother of Jesus. In a few days, on May 24, the feast of Mary Help of Christians, the Church around the world will pray with the brothers and sisters of the Church in China, as Pope Benedict XVI had requested in his Letter to Chinese Catholics.

«I will also ideally climb the hill of Sheshan», Pope Francis concluded, «and all together let us entrust to the Virgin, Help of Christians, our brothers and sisters in faith who are in China, all the Chinese people already all our poor world, asking for his intercession, so that peace always triumphs everywhere.