China slammed Pope John Paul yesterday for making saints of 120 Catholics who died under Chinese religious persecution.
China’s Foreign Ministry branded the new saints “evil-doing sinners” guilty of rape and plunder as agents of Western imperialism.
The condemnation was echoed by the leader of China’s state-run Catholic Church, Bishop Fu Tieshan, who called the pope’s move “intolerable.”
“Some of those canonized by the Vatican this time perpetrated outrages such as raping and looting in China and committed unforgivable crimes against the Chinese people,” the Foreign Ministry said.
The new saints include Albericus Crescitelli, an Italian missionary who “was notorious for taking the ‘right of the first night’ of each bride under his diocese,” the ministry said.
The pope declared the 120 – 87 Chinese Catholics, the rest foreign missionaries – martyrs because they died for their faith, mostly during the bloody Boxer Rebellion at the start of the 20th century.
But China says most were traitors executed for breaking laws when colonial forces invaded China.
“Saints should be role models, but these were criminals against the Chinese people. This is an insult to China and an insult to the Chinese Catholics,” one churchgoer in Beijing said.
China broke ties with the Vatican in 1951, and demands Catholics worship only in churches approved by the official China Patriotic Catholic Association.
The official church claims 4 million believers, but an equal number worship in an underground church loyal to the Vatican.
The canonization fell on the nation’s 51st anniversary of Communist rule – timing that infuriated Beijing, which is fighting underground Catholic churches and other banned movements.
The Vatican denies that yesterday’s ceremony was political, insisting the date was chosen because it marks the feast of St. Therese of Lisieux, patron saint of missionaries.
But the Foreign Ministry warned the canonizations will severely hamper normalization of relations between Beijing and the Vatican, which do not have diplomatic ties.