Lord Alton speaks up for 10 Chinese bishops and underground Church persecuted by CCP

 Charles Collins/Crux

October 22, 2024 at 10:00 am

Lord David Alton has drawn attention to the continued persecution of the Catholic Church in China through the oppression of 10 bishops by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and has questioned the Vatican’s muted response to the situation.

The comments from Alton, who is one of the leading Catholic members of the UK’s House of Lords, follow an article by Nina Shea published in the Hudson Institute last week entitled “Ten Persecuted Catholic Bishops in China”. Alton says seven of these bishops have been detained without due process, with some of them having been under continuous detention for years or decades, while others have been detained repeatedly since the Vatican reached its accord with the Communist regime in China. Alton calls them the “ten inconvenient bishops the Vatican wants us to forget”.

Quoting Shea’s article, Alton said the CCP has subjected the 10 bishops “to indefinite detention without due process, disappearances, open-ended security police investigations, banishments from their dioceses, or other impediments to their episcopal ministries including threats, surveillance, interrogation, and so-called re-education”. 

Lord David Alton attends a press conference in London following an incident at China’s Consulate in Manchester, England, 19 October 2022. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images.)

The persecuted bishops have opposed the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), which requires its members to pledge independence from the Holy See and “conform Christian teaching to Chinese communist doctrine”, Alton says. “They do not accept the right of the Chinese Communist Party to tell them what to believe, think or what to say.”

Read the rest: https://catholicherald.co.uk/lord-alton-speaks-up-for-10-chinese-bishops-and-underground-church-persecuted-by-ccp/