{"id":1325,"date":"2007-06-25T12:44:35","date_gmt":"2007-06-25T12:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/at-prayer.html"},"modified":"2007-06-25T12:44:35","modified_gmt":"2007-06-25T12:44:35","slug":"at-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/at-prayer.html","title":{"rendered":"At Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Praying for the China Letter.<\/a><\/p>\n

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More than 600 female monasteries are praying \u201cso that the Holy Father\u2019s letter is well-received, China opens up to the Gospels and give unrestricted religious freedom to all believers.\u201d This initiative is the brain-child of Card Ivan Dias, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, and Fr Ciro Biondi, PIME, secretary of the Pontifical Missionary Union (PUM), one of the Pontifical Missionary Works connected to Propaganda Fide. Their action comes as the publication date of the Pope\u2019s \u201cLetter to Catholics in China,\u201d which the Pope signed on May 27, solemnity of Pentecost, approaches.<\/p>\n

In a letter sent to 610 enclosed female monasteries, Cardinal Dias said that Benedict XVI wrote the letter \u201cto express his paternal closeness and offer them some orientation about the life of the Church and the work of evangelisation in that huge country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The prelate calls on them to \u201csay special prayers so that the Letter of the Holy Father is well received, China opens up to the Gospels and give unrestricted religious freedom to all believers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cardinal Dias said that \u201cthe Catholic Church [in China] is split in two groups in relation to the government: an official Church recognised by government authorities and an \u201cunderground\u201d Church. This creates a lot of problems and confusion among the clergy and the faithful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201dAll Catholics , , , are united in professing the one faith in their fearless loyalty to the Successor of Peter. For this reason many of them have experienced terrible persecution and died for the cause of Christ and the Church.\u201d<\/p>\n

Citing Tertullian, one of the early Fathers of the Church who said that the \u201cblood of martyrs is the seed of the church,\u201d the prefect of Propaganda Fide noted that \u201cit is comforting to realise that the Church in China, despite the harsh persecution that has lasted five decades, is undergoing a strong numerical growth. Almost everyone of the hundred or so bishops in that territory are in communion with the Holy See, vocations to the priestly and religious life abound, the faithful attend holy mass in great numbers and are very devoted to the Most Holy Mary, Help of Christians and Queen of China.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Praying for the China Letter. More than 600 female monasteries are praying \u201cso that the Holy Father\u2019s letter is well-received, China opens up to the Gospels and give unrestricted religious freedom to all believers.\u201d This initiative is the brain-child of Card Ivan Dias, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, and Fr Ciro…<\/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-1325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAt Prayer - 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\/06\/at-prayer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At Prayer - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Praying for the China Letter. More than 600 female monasteries are praying \u201cso that the Holy Father\u2019s letter is well-received, China opens up to the Gospels and give unrestricted religious freedom to all believers.\u201d This initiative is the brain-child of Card Ivan Dias, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, and Fr Ciro…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/at-prayer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-06-25T12:44:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"At Prayer - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/at-prayer.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"At Prayer - Via Media","og_description":"Praying for the China Letter. More than 600 female monasteries are praying \u201cso that the Holy Father\u2019s letter is well-received, China opens up to the Gospels and give unrestricted religious freedom to all believers.\u201d This initiative is the brain-child of Card Ivan Dias, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, and Fr Ciro…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/at-prayer.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-06-25T12:44:35+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/at-prayer.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/at-prayer.html","name":"At Prayer - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-06-25T12:44:35+00:00","dateModified":"2007-06-25T12:44:35+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/at-prayer.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/at-prayer.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/at-prayer.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"At Prayer"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?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\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. 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\/1325","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=1325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}