Back in September I noted that according to CWNews.com, the foreign policy journal Far Eastern Economic Review has reported "that the Vatican and China will hold a series of meetings in upcoming weeks to end the impasse over the role of the Catholic Church in China. It reported that as part of the deal, the Vatican will have to break relations with Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province."

         As part of this deal, said the magazine, Pope John Paul II would have to "offer some form of apology for historical wrongdoing by the Catholics in China, primarily a close connection with European imperialism. According to the schedule worked out by both sides, relations between the two states will be much improved by the end of next month."

         So far the plan - which appears to be yet another "triumph" in the making for Cardinal Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State - is proceeding on schedule. The papal apology to Red China was delivered on October 24, 2001. Yes, Cardinal Sodano had the Vicar of Christ apologize to the Red Chinese regime for the "wrongs" supposedly committed by Christians back in the 19th Century.

         The apology came in the form of a written message allegedly sent from the Pope to a conference in China to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Catholic missionary Matteo Ricci's arrival in Beijing. According to the Sodano plan, the Pope apologized for "the unfortunate fact that the work of members of the Church in China was not always without error, the bitter fruit of their personal limitations and of the limits of their action."

         Meaning what? Meaning, apparently, that Catholics were guilty of colonialism in the 19th Century: "In certain periods of modern history, a kind of 'protection' on the part of European political powers not infrequently resulted in limitations on the Church's very freedom of action and had negative repercussions for the Church in China." Cardinal Sodano ("the Higher Authority" behind the persecution of Father Nicholas Gruner) had the Pope say: "I feel deep sadness for these errors and limits of the past, and I regret that in many people these failings may have given the impression of a lack of respect and esteem for the Chinese people on the part of the Catholic Church, making them feel that the Church was motivated by feelings of hostility towards China. For all of this I ask the forgiveness and understanding of those who may have felt hurt in some way by such actions on the part of Christians."

         Note well: Cardinal Sodano has actually had the Pope lower himself to apologize to the current Chinese regime for the "errors" and "hostility" of unnamed "Christians" - at the very moment that same regime is brutally repressing the Catholic Church in China.

         I seem to remember from my study of the suffering of the Church in China that thousands of Chinese Catholics were killed in persecutions during the 19th Century, and that even after a certain tolerance was extended, the Boxer movement (a secret Mason-like group of Chinese nationalists) continued to kill Christians.

        But this apology, owing to its vagueness, has been interpreted by the media as an apology for the suppression by European powers of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 - during which missionaries (mostly Protestant) were slaughtered by the thousands. Why is the Pope apologizing for the actions of "Christians," most of them Protestants, more than a century ago, in the midst of Red China's persecution of the Catholic Church today? Ask Cardinal Sodano, who has no doubt engineered this entire fiasco. More on this in later columns.