"Conversion of Russia" Update:

China Continues Crackdown on True Catholics

by Christopher A. Ferrara

        While Vladimir ("the practicing Christian") Putin continues to assemble his neo-Stalinist regime in Russia, his Red Chinese military and trading partners continue their brutal crackdown on the "underground" Catholic Church in China. The "underground" Catholics remain loyal to Rome under fierce persecution and continue to refuse to join the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), which the Red Chinese have erected in place of the true Catholic Church.

        Since its creation in 1957 under Mao Tse-Tung, the CPA bishops, co-opted by the communist government, have consecrated more than 100 new schismatic bishops without a papal mandate, in direct violation of Church law. CPA bishops, despite claims of their "secret loyalty" to Rome — secret loyalty being a contradiction in terms — are mere puppets of the Red Chinese regime, who obediently condone China’s inhuman population control policies, including forced abortion.

        On August 17, 2004 CWNews reported that "The Chinese government has arrested 8 Catholic priests and 2 seminarians, in the latest strike against the underground Church. The priests were taken into custody after they had gathered in a small village in the Hebei province for a spiritual retreat, the U.S.-based Cardinal Kung Foundation reports. The arrests came in a lightning police raid on August 6, involving 20 police vehicles, according to witnesses."

        As CWNews notes, the clerics arrested were all (except one) from the Baoding diocese — that is, the true Catholic diocese in that region — including the diocesan administrator, Father Huo Junlong. Father Huo is administrator because Bishop Su Zhi-Ming of Baoding has been imprisoned since 1997 and his "current whereabouts are unknown." The auxiliary bishop of that diocese, Bishop An Shuxin, has been imprisoned since 1996. "The faithful of the underground Church in Baoding do not know whether these bishops remain alive," says CWN, and "the previous head of the diocese, Bishop Joseph Fan Xueyan, died in prison under torture. Eight other priests of the diocese are currently in prison, in addition to those arrested on August 6."

        As this column has previously reported, Jesuit magazine La Civilta Cattolica has revealed that the Vatican has given de facto recognition to the majority of CPA bishops installed by the Red Chinese. In view of the persecution of the true Catholic Church in China, the Vatican’s action constitutes one of the worst scandals in Church history — a total betrayal of the underground Catholics who have given their lives rather than join the CPA.

        But then, this is the same Vatican apparatus that has essentially done nothing about forty years of rampant heresy and homosexual infiltration of the Church, while devoting vast resources to the public hounding and persecution of Father Nicholas Gruner, "the Fatima priest," whose great offense is to remark the obvious: that Russia was not consecrated to the Immaculate Heart in 1984, that Russia has failed to convert, and that, in consequence, the Church will be persecuted and the Holy Father will have much to suffer, precisely as Our Lady of Fatima warned.