In China, the Coronavirus is Becoming a Pretext for Attacking Catholics
According to the journalist An Xin, editor of Bitter Winter - a newspaper critical of the Beijing regime - the Communist Party in the city of Nenjiang, in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, is urging residents to denounce their neighbors, as soon as they organize religious ceremonies at home. A measure that primarily targets Catholics in the underground Church.
On February 20, 2020, the Nenjiang “Coronavirus Control Group,” established by the Chinese government, issued an order expressly prohibiting meeting at home for the purpose of carrying out “illegal religious activities.”
The residents of Nenjiang were offered a reward of 5,000 RMB - about 650 euros - if they reported suspected illegal religious activity to the authorities.
According to official statistics from the Beijing regime, which should be taken with a grain of salt, about ten million Catholics live in the Middle Kingdom, of which six million are affiliated to the state approved Catholic Patriotic Association of Chinese Catholics (APCC).
The other four million belong to the underground Church which, unlike the APCC, is not supervised by the Communist Party and has always remained faithful and united to the Holy See.
The Sino-Vatican secret agreement, concluded in September 2018, had the avowed aim of regularizing the canonical situation of the APCC and thus of reducing the Chinese schism, carried out in 1958 in Wuhan. But according to several concordant reports, since the signing of the agreement, the government’s persecution of the underground Church is far from over.
In November 2019, APCC President Bishop John Fang Xingyao even said that Catholics in the country should put loyalty to the state before the Catholic faith: “Love for the homeland must be greater than love for the Church, and the law of the country is above canon law,” said the prelate.
May Our Lady of Fatima come to the aid of the Catholics of China, and save them from the communist virus which is ravaging their country.
(Sources : Bitter Winter/Catholic Herald - FSSPX.Actualités - 16/04/2020)
