{"id":1238,"date":"2007-07-18T09:38:30","date_gmt":"2007-07-18T09:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/a-bishop-for-beijing-1.html"},"modified":"2007-07-18T09:38:30","modified_gmt":"2007-07-18T09:38:30","slug":"a-bishop-for-beijing-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/a-bishop-for-beijing-1.html","title":{"rendered":"A bishop for Beijing"},"content":{"rendered":"

From AsiaNews:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

The \u201ccommunity\u201d of the Beijing diocese has chosen Fr. Joseph Li Shan, 43, as their new bishop. The news was gathered from Chinese Catholic sources, who clarify that his nomination took place on July 16th.<\/p>\n

His election will be confirmed by the \u201cCouncil of bishops\u201d, taking over the post left vacant by the death of Michele Fu Tieshan, Patriotic Archbishop of Beijing, who died on April 20th or maybe even earlier. As president of the Patriotic Association, the organism by which the Communist Party controls the Catholic Church in the country, Msgr. Fu Tieshan always sided with the government and against the Holy See. On his death he was given a state burial, attended by numerous political figures and few faithful.<\/p>\n

Fr. Li Shan\u2019s election is the first to take place in China following the publication of Benedict XVI\u2019s Letter to the Catholics of China.  The procedure for his appointment was formally \u201cindependent\u201d, in so far as he was elected by an assembly comprising priests, nuns and lay people and not nominated by the Pope.  He will similarly be confirmed by the Council of Bishops, a group which the Pope wrote in his Letter, \u201ccannot be recognised as an Episcopal conference of the Apostolic See\u201d.<\/p>\n

Regarding the choice of Fr. Li Shan, officially, the Vatican has limited itself to following the situation \u201cwith great attention\u201d but without any comment.  Instead, according to Chinese Catholic sources, the name of Fr. Li Shan was among those put forward for the post of Beijing archbishop which did not raise objections in Rome, even in the absence an \u201caccord\u201d.<\/p>\n

Fr. Giuseppe Li Shan, in fact, is considered across the board as a good and true pastor.  A man of faith, capable of relating to both the faithful and the political authorities.  He is a native of Beijing; his family has a deep rooted Catholic tradition, giving him an advantage over someone not from the area.  He has never travelled abroad, not even for study.  If this creates some difficulties regarding international relations, on the other hand it makes him to a \u201cnational product\u201d in the eyes of the faithful and the authorities.<\/p>\n

In his relations with the Patriotic Association he has been most succinct, rejecting the power of the AP. In recent years he has fought against the forced expropriation of Church property in his parish (Dong Tang) by members of the AP and the \u201csecretary\u201d of Fu Tieshan, Chen Maoju. This is why the faithful of Beijing admire him. His opposition to the AP and Fu\u2019s gang also put him in a good light with the local and national government.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From AsiaNews: The \u201ccommunity\u201d of the Beijing diocese has chosen Fr. Joseph Li Shan, 43, as their new bishop. The news was gathered from Chinese Catholic sources, who clarify that his nomination took place on July 16th. His election will be confirmed by the \u201cCouncil of bishops\u201d, taking over the post left vacant by the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nA bishop for Beijing - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2007\/07\/a-bishop-for-beijing-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A bishop for Beijing - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From AsiaNews: The \u201ccommunity\u201d of the Beijing diocese has chosen Fr. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}