How China will influence the next pontiff after the pivot of Pope Francis in Asia

The body of Pope Francis will be buried this Saturday in the Roman basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

At this stage, his mortal remains will rest under the protection of an image of Mary with a high spiritual value for Catholicism, a great symbolic power for the Jesuits – and for the relations between the Catholic Church and Asia.

It is the Byzantine icon of the Virgin Salus Populi Romani, the Savior of the Roman people. It was the official representation of Mary officially authorized, by Papal Bull, to be disseminated and reproduced.

The icon of the Virgin of the Basilica of St Mary Major is also a symbol of Catholic attempts to evangelize Asia. In fact, it has become the emblem of the epic of the great Jesuit trips in the Far East, including China, and in 1602, the Jesuit missionary and the sinologist Matteo Ricci donated a copy of the icon to the Chinese emperor.

The search for a new “Passage to the East” for evangelization was one of the main axes of the pontificate of Pope Francis. Many observers even consider it on the main political mission of the deceased Pope.

A decentralized conclave

The East turn manifests itself in this year's conclave, where Asia will be better represented among the voting cardinals than ever. Some ecclesiastical observers went so far as to call the redistribution of “revolutionary” voting power.

Theologian Gianni Criveller, missionary for decades in the Chinese world and editor -in -chief of the digital newspaper Asia News, said that this spends the end of a Eurocentric custom which attributed an overwhelming majority to the cardinals of the old continent.

“Surprisingly, cities like Paris, Milan and countries like Austria and Ireland will not have a cardinal in the conclave,” he said. “Instead, we will have cardinals from Mongolia, where there are only a thousand Catholics, myanmar, and another from Thailand, countries with a large Buddhist majority.”

For the first time, Asia will be represented by 23 cardinal voters out of 135. China will have one, Bishop Stephen Chow Said from Hong Kong.

The proportion of Asian voters is important in relation to the spread of Catholicism in this region. The only deeply Catholic country in the region is the Philippines, whose religiosity has been inherited from its Spanish colonizers.

Of nearly 1.5 billion Catholics worldwide, Asia represents 10%, although they represent just over 3% of the population of the continent. However, Asia is now at the forefront of human and economic development, and the Vatican cannot claim that it does not exist.

According to the papal diplomacy of Pope Francis, a Catholic presence in those who are no longer distant will soon be as essential as its traditional rooting in Europe, the Americas and Africa.

Another reason why Asia was relevant at the time of the Pope is technology. Pope Francis was the first pontiff to address a summit of the G7 economy ministers, appearing in Puglia in June 2024 to speak of artificial intelligence.

The Gospel, a passport to the world

Father Criveller said that the ultimate objective of the geographic revolution of the college of cardinal voters was “the spread of the Gospel”.

“It is not a proselytism, but simply the transmission of knowledge of the Gospel to other cultures, exactly as the Jesuits did in the 17th century.”

The idea was for a pastoral mission to remove the Catholic Church from the colonial history of the West; To bring the world to Rome, not vice versa. This vision was certainly informed by the South American history of Pope Francis.

But the evangelical mission is not everything.

According to Professor Silvia Menegazzi, founder of the Center for Contemporary China Studies, “Pope Francis had a very precise vision of relations between states. A vision that has certainly always been much more in line with that of the countries that we could call non -Western, which we could call the South world.”

The Argentinian pontiff has made pastoral trips to the Middle East, South Korea, Philippines, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Thailand, Japan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Indonesia, Eastern Timor and Singapore. However, despite political efforts, he did not visit the two Asian giants: India and China.

As things arise, the Vatican and Beijing have no formal diplomatic relationship. In fact, the Holy See recognizes Taiwan as the Republic of China, one of the main reasons why Pope Francis has failed to adorn continental Visit China.

Beijing, however, expressed his condolences to the death of Francis and plans to send a “high -ranking government delegation” to his funeral.

Rapper with Beijing

Nevertheless, papal diplomacy achieved a major political breakthrough with Beijing in 2018, establishing the possibility of approving the appointment of Chinese Catholic bishops by the Communist regime.

Until then, the Chinese authorities have been unilaterally appointed local bishops, but in 2018, the Vatican now approves the appointments, a change that could greatly stimulate the credibility of the Catholic Church in China and East Asia.

But there were necessarily compromises.

“This agreement is certainly an exercise from the Vatican Realpolitik,” said Father Criveller. “As a counterpart, the pope was unable to visit Catholics in Hong Kong, Macao and especially Taiwan. He also did not intervene on questions of human and religious rights in China and the question of Uighur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists, or military threats against Taiwan.”

According to official figures provided by the government in Beijing, there are about 10 million Catholics in China, but the sources of church say that this number only understands the faithful who belong to official religious institutions.

There are also unofficial Catholic organizations in China that the authorities do not recognize, comprising up to 30 bishops out of a hundred in a hundred, which are accepted by the Vatican as legitimate.

“Compared to the predecessors, with Francis, the relations between China and the Vatican have improved,” said Menegazzi, “but not as the expected Vatican. China remains by an old tradition – not only under communism – the most atheist country in the world.”

“We will see how the successor will define his Asian policy. The relationship with China was certainly more linked to the person of Francis. It will therefore be necessary to assess how the new pontiff will examine China rather than vice versa.”

Although the composition of the Post-François conclave is partly linked to the political and religious orientations of the deceased Pope, it is not clear to what extent the political conditions of the world and Europe will allow his successor to finish the awareness of Pope Francis in the East.

“The late Pontift attached great importance to international policy and relations,” said Father Criveller. “In contemporary times, the only pope we had like him was John Paul II.”

Source Link