China, Vatican sign provisional agreement on bishop appointments

China and the Vatican signed a provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops on Saturday, China's Foreign Ministry announced later that day.



A Vatican delegation held talks with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Chao on Saturday in Beijing, after which the deal was signed, read a statement from the ministry's website.



The two sides will continue communicating to promote bilateral relations, said the statement.



The two sides put in great effort to achieve the agreement and their good intentions deserve to be known, said Bishop Fang Jianping, deputy head of the Bishops' Conference of the Catholic Church in China.



The provisional agreement will open a new page for the China-Vatican relations, Fang told the Global Times on Saturday.



"Provisional" shows this agreement will be improved and expanded over time, Vatican affairs expert Francesco Sisci told the Global Times on the signing of the provisional agreement between China and the Vatican on Saturday.



The Vatican is the historical continuity of thousands of years of Western civilization. The Chinese government is the continuity of three millennia of history. This deal signals that, for the first time, these two civilizations are meeting as equals, in peace, without the hatred of war or the petty calculations of trade, Sisci said.



The deal does not deserve criticism from Catholic groups as it was reached out of practical needs and to further the global development of the Catholic church, Fang noted.



Critics of the long-waited agreement are merely a "loud minority," said Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, also chancellor of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences.



"In our interpretation, the critics are a little minority group of people, people who wanted to create trouble," the bishop told the Global Times in an exclusive interview on Friday.



Sorondo explained the importance of having this deal, or having China better involved in the Catholic world, is that "the country has a large population with good quality people, it observes the common good and it has proved its ability to great missions like fighting against poverty and pollution."

