This post was originally published on this site.
The Vatican announced on Monday the most recent in a growing list of bishops selected and installed under the norms of the 2018 agreement with the Chinese government on episcopal appointments.
Bishop Paul Liu Honggang was consecrated Aug. 31 and installed as the new head of the Diocese of Datong, which had gone more than three-quarters of a century without a publicly acknowledged leader.
Liu is the latest in a growing queue of relatively smooth episcopal appointments for the Chinese mainland since the election of Pope Leo XIV last year. After years of dysfunction, with mainland authorities choosing and installing bishops without reference, or even prior notice, to the Vatican, the 2018 Vatican-China deal appears to be working, at least at the technical level. Candidates are selected internally via the state-sponsored Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, submitted to Rome for approval and then installed and announced on a schedule coordinated between Beijing and the Vatican.
Liu, himself a well known CPCA member and supporter, is increasingly of a type making up the emerging mainland episcopal cohort, though some appointments have indicated the acceptance of figures from what is still
Read more...
