Francis Has an Offer in Store for China: A New Blessed

It will be the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, one of the very few Westerners honored by the Chinese communist authorities. But the thaw between Beijing and the Church of Rome still seems to be a long way off



by Sandro Magister







8.7.2014

ROME, July 8, 2014 – After already having canonized six new saints without waiting for a new miracle to be certified for each of them after their beatification, Pope Francis could soon proclaim another new blessed in accelerated fashion.The new blessed would be the Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), the brilliant evangelizer of China.Matteo Ricci is another of Jorge Mario Bergoglio's favorite early members of the Society of Jesus, together with the Savoyard Peter Faber, whom he has already proclaimed a saint by bending the rules, with what is called the canonization “equivalent.”But there is another predilection that Pope Francis shares with Matteo Ricci: a fondness for Asia and for China in particular.Bergoglio has always prized the method Ricci adopted for proclaiming the news of the Gospel to a civilization like that of China, far removed from Christianity by religion and culture.A method that paradoxically bears a strong resemblance to the positive interweaving of faith and reason tirelessly preached by Pope Francis's predecessor, Benedict XVI, as illustrated in detail by this article from www.chiesa by Fr. Gianni Criveller, a missionary in Hong Kong for the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions and the supervisor of the cause for the canonization of Matteo Ricci: > A Ratzinger from Four Centuries Ago, in Beijing (1.10.2010)In visiting South Korea next August, in his first voyage as pope to the Far East, Bergoglio has already made it clear that he sees the flourishing development of Catholicism in that country precisely as a fruit of Matteo Ricci's method of evangelization.It was in fact literate Koreans converted to Christianity by European missionaries who had worked in China in the footsteps of Ricci who introduced the Christian faith in Korea in the seventeenth century. And still today it is lay Christians who are the protagonists of the proclamation of the Gospel in this country.Francis also nourishes the hope that the beatification of Matteo Ricci - a figure appreciated by Chinese of every creed, including the communist authorities - could facilitate the improvement of relations between China and the Church of Rome.Today these relations continue to be marked, on the Chinese side, by mistrust and hostility, with genuine acts of persecution of the local Catholic community.It is true that for the first time in history a Chinese communist president, Xi Jinping, has responded in writing to a papal letter of congratulations on his election, which Francis addressed to him in March of 2013.But it is also true that afterward there has been little or nothing positive from the Chinese side, beyond this gesture of official courtesy.On the contrary, following the death in the diocese of Shanghai of the “underground” bishop Joseph Fan Zhongliang, the ban on officiating at the funeral Mass imposed by the authorities in Beijing on the successor designated by Rome, Thaddeus Ma Daqin, held under house arrest, has been a real slap in the face for the current pontiff.Secretary of state Pietro Parolin will have his work cut out for him. The experience he accumulated in improving relations between the Holy See and Vietnam - a dossier that presents many similarities with that of China - has taught him that with Beijing as well the undertaking will be long, tortuous, and uncertain right up to the end.On the special fondness of Pope Francis for the Asian continent, Gerolamo Fazzini - director of "Mondo e Missione," the oldest and most important European magazine on the missions, and of MissionLine.org, the portal of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions - has published an enlightening analysis in the latest issue of “Vita e Pensiero," the magazine of the Catholic University of Milan.The following is the concluding part of his analysis, in which he addresses and explains the possible upcoming beatification of the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, evangelizer of China.__________A valuable point of contact in the picture of relations between the Vatican and China is (or at least could be) the figure of Matteo Ricci.It is no secret that the Jesuit originally from the Marche - the first foreigner to be taken to heart by Beijing at the behest of the emperor at the time, and still buried in the grounds of a training school of the communist party - is known in China and esteemed even in non-Catholic circles.Suffice it to say that in China people with an average education, to whatever religious tradition they may belong, know of Ricci and his history, at least in the broad outlines. Not only that: his name appears on the Millennium Monument, an enormous edifice that celebrates the glory of Chinese civilization. Only two foreigners are present on it, both of them Italian: one is Marco Polo at the court of Kublai Khan, the other is Ricci, represented in Confucian garb and gazing into the sky.Now: Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pontiff in history, has already repeatedly demonstrated that he prizes the mission of Matteo Ricci and wants to point it out as a model for today as well.It has not escaped the attention of acute observers like Lucio Brunelli and Gianni Valente, in the March 2014 issue of the geopolitics magazine “Limes," that the famous "almost to the ends of the earth" spoken by Jorge Mario Bergoglio on the evening of his election to the see of Peter to indicate his origins represents not so much a geographic reference as an explicit allusion precisely to “another great Jesuit who loved to step outside the boundaries of Catholicism in order to push even into the most extreme peripheries of the planet, that Matteo Ricci who from Beijing, four centuries ago, wrote that he found himself 'at this end of the world to which obedience has flung me.'"And also. In the September 2013 interview with "La Civiltà Cattolica," pressed by his confrere Antonio Spadaro, Bergoglio cites some of the most significant stages of the missionary history of the Jesuits and of mission tout court. Among these - together with the chapter of Malabar in India and the epic of the “Reductions" in Paraguay immortalized by the famous film “Mission” - is precisely the extraordinary adventure of Ricci and companions.But that's not all. As the vaticanista Luigi Accattoli has observed, one of the most interesting passages of the conversation last November between Pope Francis and superiors general of religious (also published by "La Civiltà Cattolica") is dedicated to Matteo Ricci and his missionary style, long misunderstood if not opposed.Here are Pope Bergoglio's words:"The charism is not a bottle of distilled water. It needs to be lived energetically as well as reinterpreted culturally. But in this way there is the danger of making a mistake, you say, of committing errors.[. . .] But this should not stop us, because there is the chance of making worse mistakes. In fact we should always ask for forgiveness and look shamefully upon apostolic failures due to a lack of courage. Just think, for example, of the pioneer intuitions of Matteo Ricci which were allowed to crumble at that time."No less an expert on Ricci than Fr. Gianni Criveller, a missionary of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions who presided over the historical commission in the diocesan phase of the process for the canonization of the Jesuit from the Marche, commented in the magazine “Credere":"Bergoglio's words on Ricci are very efficacious. In 1959 John XXIII was the first pope to mention Ricci in a positive way, pulling him out of the shadow of condemnation that weighed over him after the dramatic outcome of the Chinese Rites controversy that did so much to damage the missions in China. Paul VI and John Paul II fully rehabilitated Ricci, while Benedict XVI was without a doubt the pope who studied and knew him the best, and spoke of him with great competency and decisive appreciation.”It may be rash to say this, but now that the cause of the great missionary and intellectual, with the diocesan phase of the process concluded, has moved on to Rome, it is not unlikely that the Jesuit Bergoglio would allow a preferential route to the altars for what is not only one of the most prominent names in the Society of Jesus, but in general one of the absolute protagonists of the missionary history of the universal Church.The precedent of Peter Faber - the Savoyard Jesuit canonized on December 17, 2013 by the direct intervention of Pope Francis - makes it reasonable to hope for this. The practice adopted for Blessed Faber - Stefania Falasca has explained in "Avvenire " - is that of the canonization “equivalent,” a practice used in regard to figures of particular ecclesial significance for whom there is widespread and long-standing liturgical devotion and an uninterrupted reputation of holiness and miracles.It must be said that Benedict XVI hoped that the beatification of Ricci could go hand-in-hand with that of the most famous Chinese convert, Xu Guangqi ("Doctor Paul," as he is called in the writings of the Jesuits of the time), himself a disciple of Ricci and the founder of the Catholic Church of Shanghai.But the situation of the diocese of Shanghai, the promoter of the cause, is - times being what they are - delicate to say the least. In the span of just a few months there have been the deaths of the government-sanctioned bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian, a Jesuit who died at the age of over ninety years old, and the "unofficial" bishop Joseph Fan Zhongliang, also elderly, while their auxiliary and successor Thaddeus Ma Daqin continues to be subjected to heavy restrictions on his personal freedom."It is true that the current difficulties of the diocese of Shanghai make the cause of beatification for Xu much more slow and complicated than that of Ricci,” admits the French Jesuit Benoît Vermander, in an article that appeared last March on the website of the Taipei Ricci Institute. "But precisely these difficulties should drive Rome to shepherd the cause with greater diligence: there are many paths by which a cause of this kind could progress. More than four centuries have passed since Ricci went to heaven. I am convinced that he would be willing to wait a few more years to be recognized as a blessed and saint in the company of his friend Xu Guangqi.""Ricci," the Jesuit insists, "began his Chinese pilgrimage by publishing a little book entitled 'On Friendship.' His process of beatification should reflect the spirit with which he conducted his missionary outreach. In other words: do not beatify Matteo Ricci without beatifying Xu Guangqi at the same time."There are at least three good reasons to unite the two friends in a common cause, according to Fr. Vermander:"The first is that Xu Guangqi it is also a man whose life speaks of holiness. The second is that this will change the way in which missionary history is usually presented. The third is that this could be by far the greatest gift that Rome could give to the Chinese Church and to China in general.”It is difficult not to agree with these statements.___________The magazine of the Catholic University of Milan in which the commentary by Gerolamo Fazzini was published:__________Regarding the hypothesis - which however is impracticable at the moment - of a voyage of Pope Francis to China, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, raised the alarm in an interview with "Corriere della Sera" of last July 2:"I would say to the pope: 'Do not come, because it would be manipulated.' He could not meet with the few who are courageous, while the communist party would present to him the illegitimate bishops, including the three who are excommunicated.”_________On the evolution of Christianity in China, the forecasts of one of the leading sociologists of religion, the American Rodney Stark, interviewed by Massimo Introvigne:__________In the illustration on this page Matteo Ricci is on the left. On the right, the high-ranking Chinese functionary he baptized, Xu Guangqi, whose parallel cause of beatification is underway.__________English translation by Matthew Sherry , Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.__________For more news and commentary, see the blog that Sandro Magister maintains, available only in Italian:__________