Word: tange
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Bishop Dominic Tang was the pivotal man in the Vatican's hopes for a diplomatic bridgehead in Communist China. The government not only freed him from prison last year but recognized him as head of the Canton diocese. Tang later went to Rome, and Pope John Paul II named him permanent Archbishop of Canton. But Archbishop Tang had barely reached Hong Kong before Peking stripped him of office. China Daily complained that in receiving a papal appointment, Tang had violated the independence and dignity of the autonomous Chinese church. Now he is only a bishop-in-exile...
...eight Vatican-appointed bishops in mainland China, five are under house arrest and the fate of two others is unknown. That leaves Jesuit Dominic Tang, who in 1950 was appointed apostolic administrator, or temporary head, of the Canton diocese by Pope Pius XII and subsequently spent 22 years in a Communist prison. With church conditions improving dramatically in China, Tang was freed last year. Surprisingly, he also won the approval of the province's government to resume duties as administrator of his diocese...
Last week Pope John Paul II named Tang, 73, the country's only archbishop and formally assigned him to Canton. It was the Vatican's first permanent episcopal appointment in China since...
...Tang, who has been in Rome for several months, plans to return home this week and quietly resume his duties. As the sole bishop in China accepted by both the Vatican and the Communist regime, Tang is clearly supposed to help improve relations between Rome and Peking and with China's "patriotic" bishops who reject papal authority. But the prospects seem dim. Peking quickly denounced the appointment as "an interference in China's internal affairs," and the patriotic bishops called it "illegal" and "intolerable...
Neither the Pope nor China's rulers know quite what to do about the many Chinese Catholics who, like Bishop Tang, suffered intense persecution for decades because they remained loyal to the papacy and spurned the patriotic bishops. It is possible that most Chinese Catholics will continue to refuse to recognize the government-imposed religious hierarchy. Says one such Vatican loyalist in Shanghai: "Many of us grew up together and shared the sufferings of being Catholic. There isn't a single one who will go to a patriotic church...