{"id":379,"date":"2007-12-21T15:00:13","date_gmt":"2007-12-21T15:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2007\/12\/pope-willing-to-talk-with-chin.php"},"modified":"2007-12-21T15:00:13","modified_gmt":"2007-12-21T15:00:13","slug":"pope-willing-to-talk-with-chin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/pope-willing-to-talk-with-chin","title":{"rendered":"Pope Willing to Talk with China"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Associated Press<\/strong><br \/>\nVatican City &#8211; Pope Benedict XVI said Friday the Vatican is willing to have &#8220;serene and constructive&#8221; talks with Chinese authorities to solve the problems of the Catholic community in the country.<br \/>\nBenedict recalled a letter he sent to all Catholics in China in June, in which he praised the underground faithful but urged them to reconcile with followers in the official church.<br \/>\n&#8220;With this letter, I wanted to express both my deep spiritual affection for all Catholics in China and a cordial esteem for the Chinese people,&#8221; the pontiff said in his traditional holiday remarks to the prelates who run Vatican offices.<br \/>\nIn the letter, the pope added, &#8220;I have indicated the willingness of the Holy See for a serene and constructive dialogue with the civil authorities with the goal of finding a solution to the various problems of the Catholic community.&#8221;<br \/>\nBenedict said that Chinese Catholics received the letter with &#8220;joy and gratitude&#8221; and said he hoped it would &#8220;bear the hoped-for fruits.&#8221;<br \/>\nThis year, the pope has stepped up efforts to improve church relations with China.<br \/>\nChina forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951, shortly after the officially atheist Communist Party took power. Worship is allowed only in state-backed churches, which recognize the pope as a spiritual leader but appoint their own priests and bishops.<br \/>\nMillions of Chinese, however, belong to unofficial congregations that are not registered with the authorities.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Associated Press Vatican City &#8211; Pope Benedict XVI said Friday the Vatican is willing to have &#8220;serene and constructive&#8221; talks with Chinese authorities to solve the problems of the Catholic community in the country. Benedict recalled a letter he sent to all Catholics in China in June, in which he praised the underground faithful but&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pope Willing to Talk with China<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/pope-willing-to-talk-with-chin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pope Willing to Talk with China\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Associated Press Vatican City &#8211; Pope Benedict XVI said Friday the Vatican is willing to have &#8220;serene and constructive&#8221; talks with Chinese authorities to solve the problems of the Catholic community in the country. 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Benedict recalled a letter he sent to all Catholics in China in June, in which he praised the underground faithful but&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/pope-willing-to-talk-with-chin","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2007-12-21T15:00:13+00:00","author":"akornfeld","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/pope-willing-to-talk-with-chin","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/pope-willing-to-talk-with-chin","name":"Pope Willing to Talk with China","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-12-21T15:00:13+00:00","dateModified":"2007-12-21T15:00:13+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/pope-willing-to-talk-with-chin#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/pope-willing-to-talk-with-chin"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/pope-willing-to-talk-with-chin#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Pope Willing to Talk with China"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a","name":"akornfeld","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","caption":"akornfeld"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/akornfeld"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}