Beijing, China - China's government-backed Catholic church elected new leaders on Thursday, including a prelate unrecognized by the Vatican to head its bishops' council, in a move likely to worsen often uneasy relations with the Holy See.
Ties between China and the Vatican already were strained because of a dispute over the Nov. 20 ordination of the Rev. Joseph Guo Jincai as a bishop without papal approval. The Vatican says only it has the right to name bishops, and the question of their appointment has been the main stumbling block in resuming relations with the government in Beijing.
Now the state-backed church has picked two other bishops to lead the two main organizations supervising Catholic church policy in China - groups the Vatican disapproves of because they run counter to Catholic doctrine. One of the bishops is unrecognized by the Holy See, which could be an obstacle for the country's prelates to gain acceptance by Rome.
In a speech to the delegates, senior Communist Party leader Jia Qinglin laid out in stark terms Beijing's plan to continue its control over the Catholic church in China.
The two organizations "are conscientiously resisting the infiltrating activities of overseas forces," he said, according to a transcript posted on the government's website. "Under whatever conditions, Chinese Catholics will continue running the church independently. The party and government will support the healthy development of the Chinese Catholic church as always."
Bishop Ma Yinglin was chosen as head of the Bishops' Conference of the Catholic Church of China during the meeting of about 300 bishops, priests and laymen in Beijing, said Liu Bainian, the powerful vice chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.
Ma's ordination as bishop in 2006 in the southwestern city of Kunming was not recognized by the Vatican, which according to reports at the time was opposed to him because he was too close to the official Chinese church's leaders and had inadequate pastoral experience.
"His legal status is still in question. So his election made some people a little bit surprised," said Anthony Lam, a researcher at the Roman Catholic church-affiliated Holy Spirit Study Center in Hong Kong.
A Chinese expert said Ma's appointment would hurt efforts to build ties with the Vatican and that it could cause disunity among the prelates.
"The development of relations with the Vatican will become more difficult with the selection of a non-approved bishop as the chairman of the bishops' council," said Gao Shining, a professor at the Institute of World Religions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
"It's an open secret that Vatican-approved bishops are accepted by most of the bishops in China," Gao said.
The association's new chairman, meanwhile, is Bishop Fang Xingyao of Linyi city in northern Shandong province, Liu said.
Fang is a Vatican-approved bishop, researcher Lam said, but is seen as somewhat weak in the face of government pressure because he has presided over ordinations of prelates who have not gained the pope's approval.
The appointments were ultimately of little significance because Liu, a veteran in the Patriotic Association and a Communist Party loyalist, holds the most influence over the Catholic church in China, Lam said.
The two organizations' top positions have been vacant since Bishop Fu Tieshan's death in 2007. He was head of the Patriotic Association from 1998 and served as acting head of the Bishops' Conference for about two years. Fu's simultaneous control of both bodies underscored the government's tight grip on the official church.
Communist China forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951, and worship is allowed only in state-backed churches, although millions of Chinese belong to unofficial congregations loyal to Rome.
The Chinese government said it hoped the Vatican would help create conditions for the development of ties between the sides.
"We hope the Vatican can face the Chinese policy of religious freedom and the fact that Chinese Catholic church enjoys development," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular briefing Thursday, without commenting directly on this week's meeting.
Vatican-affiliated news agency AsiaNews, which closely covers the church in China, reported this week that many bishops were under pressure by authorities to attend the meeting. Some went into hiding or said they were ill to avoid being forced to Beijing to attend, the agency said, citing sources it did not identify.
"The assembly and the forced deportation of bishops cast a dark shadow on relations between China and the Vatican, after years of detente," AsiaNews said.