Escalating charges, China accuses Vatican of making saints of sinners

October 3, 2000 Web posted at: 4:12 AM HKT (2012 GMT) BEIJING (AP) -- China on Monday accused the pope of making saints of sinful Catholics, countering the Vatican's canonization of 120 martyrs to Chinese religious persecution with a list of their alleged crimes. State-controlled media released the most detailed accusations against the canonized Catholics in two weeks of escalating rhetoric against the Vatican. The accusations included the first specific attacks on some of the 87 Chinese converts, who on Sunday became the country's first saints. China had earlier leveled specific attacks against some of the 33 foreign missionaries canonized Sunday. Among those singled out by the Xinhua News Agency was Ioannes Baptista Luo Ting-yin, identified by the Vatican as John Baptist Lo, killed in 1861. Xinhua alleged that he beat a group of children outside a church in the southern city of Guiyang because he thought "their happy folk songs were an insult to God." "China's history books are evidence that there were numerous crimes committed by foreign missionaries," Xinhua said. "But the Vatican not only refuses to repent to the Chinese people, but also goes so far as to distort history by beatifying their monstrous criminal deeds." Pope John Paul II, who performed the canonization, on Monday praised the new saints' refusal to bow to "ferocious persecution" while acknowledging that some may have made mistakes. "If there were -- and is man ever free of defects? -- we ask forgiveness," John Paul said, speaking to pilgrims who attended Sunday's ceremony in Rome. The row over the saints has threatened recent attempts to end the 50-year-old rift between China and the Vatican. It has reignited prickly Chinese nationalism and a fascination with the anti-foreign Boxer Uprising of 100 years ago. Eighty-six among the canonized died at the hands of that violent sect.

Fearful of foreign influence in China, the communists severed ties with the Vatican in 1951 and set up the China Patriotic Catholic Association to administer churches and ordain bishops without Rome's approval. While the state church counts 4 million followers, at least an equal number remain loyal to the Vatican. People's Daily, the authoritative newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, said that by canonizing the 120 on Sunday _ China's National Day and the 51st anniversary of communist rule _ the Vatican "seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people." Leaders of the state-run Catholic and Protestant churches attended a symposium Monday "to oppose the Vatican's canonization of so-called 'saints,"' China Central Television reported. Xinhua grouped the new saints into three categories: foreign missionaries who helped foreign powers "invade and pillage China," their Chinese Catholic "henchmen," and converts killed by Chinese trying to drive out the foreigners. Many of the charges catalogued by Xinhua and People's Daily are long acknowledged by Western historians: missionaries took part in the opium trade and helped foreign governments trying to carve China into spheres of influence in the 19th and early 20th centuries. "They sold opium, collected intelligence, participated in invasion, plotted in drafting unequal treaties. All in all, nobody can cover up their sins and crimes," People's Daily said in an editorial to be published Tuesday and read aloud on state television Monday night. Among the better known examples raised by Xinhua is the case of Auguste Chapdelaine. He preached in an inland county in 1855, violating an 1844 treaty with France that allowed proselytizing in certain port cities, and was put to death. France used the execution to launch military campaigns against China. Lesser known were the cases of Aldericus Crescitelli, killed in the Boxer Uprising, and Franciscus de Capillas, executed by a court in 1648. Xinhua accused them of rape, adultery and extortion. In recent years the Vatican has apologized for a host of historical wrongs -- the Crusades and the Inquisition -- and tried to reconcile with Jews, the newspaper said. "But it failed to express any remorse for the crimes it has committed against the Chinese."

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