{"id":2013,"date":"2007-04-23T09:38:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-23T09:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/death-in-china.html"},"modified":"2007-04-23T09:38:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-23T09:38:00","slug":"death-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/death-in-china.html","title":{"rendered":"Death in China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michele Fu Tieshan, Patriotic Archbishop of Beijing died last week<\/a>. From AsiaNews:<\/p>\n

\n
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Michele Fu Tieshan, Patriotic Archbishop of Beijing, will receive a funeral fit for a \u201chead of state\u201d. There will be no Vatican representative present, neither the religious ceremony nor the state burial.<\/p>\n

Church sources in Hong Kong told AsiaNews <\/em>that members of the Beijing Patriotic Association expressed their desire that there should be a Vatican representative at the burial, but it is \u201chighly improbable that someone will attend.  There was no Vatican representative at last year\u2019s funeral of msgr.  Li Duan [archbishop of Xian] who was in deep communion with the Pope and Vatican\u201d. Despite this, the sources add, all of the faithful in China and abroad \u201cshould pray for his soul, which is now at the mercy of God\u2019s justice\u201d.<\/p>\n

Michele Fu Tieshan died yesterday evening at 19.50 (Beijing time), at Beijing Hospital. In the official statement however, the Patriotic Association, decided to make it appear that he died at 8.08 in the evening, because of the \u201cluck\u201d that number \u201c8\u201d brings in Chinese fortune telling. \u201cLets\u2019 just hope that they don\u2019t put Taoist cards or Majiang playing cards in his coffin!\u201d was the comment of one Beijing Catholic. The reference is to the superstitious nature of the deceased bishop and his passion for Majiang (Chinese dominos).<\/p>\n

The capital\u2019s faithful notice with some bitterness that the patriotic bishop\u2019s body was \u201csequestered\u201d by the PA \u2013 of which Fu was national president \u2013 in order to publicize his \u201ccontribution to the nation\u201d, without a single reference to the Catholic faith. \u201cHe died as he lived \u2013 one woman notices \u2013 that is as Communist Party property\u201d. The same official Party statement, exalts him as a \u201cpatriotic religious leader, social activist and great friend of the Chinese communist party\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Jen Ambrose has more from on the ground in Shekou.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michele Fu Tieshan, Patriotic Archbishop of Beijing died last week. From AsiaNews: Michele Fu Tieshan, Patriotic Archbishop of Beijing, will receive a funeral fit for a \u201chead of state\u201d. There will be no Vatican representative present, neither the religious ceremony nor the state burial. Church sources in Hong Kong told AsiaNews that members of 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-2013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nDeath in China - 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\/04\/death-in-china.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Death in China - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Michele Fu Tieshan, Patriotic Archbishop of Beijing died last week. 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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\/2013","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=2013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}