Zen said the persecution of Catholics in China had moved the Vatican to try to reach an accord that would relieve the suffering of believers.
“There was a very optimistic feeling after the death of Pope John Paul II and the installation of the new pope,” he said.
The Italian government was approached to grant visas to cadres from China’s Religious Affairs Bureau and from the state security apparatus.
Silvio Berlusconi, then the prime minister, approved. The delegation was whisked to Rome, then, on the instructions of Pope Benedict XVI, invited into the inner sanctum of the church’s city-state. “They were received very kindly and given a privileged tour of the Vatican and of the Sistine chapel one Sunday,” said Zen.
Within months, senior clergy in Rome were talking of a grand bargain that would see the Vatican transfer its embassy from Taipei to Beijing and a cordial agreement with China allowing Catholics to profess obedience to the Pope.
However, as the secret diplomacy unfolded, it caused panic among the legions of Chinese officials whose power and status depend on the continued existence of a state bureaucracy to control religion.
It posed a direct threat to the so-called Patriotic Association, set up on orders from Mao Tse-tung in the 1950s as the only permitted national church for Chinese Catholics.
Anthony Liu Bainian, its vice-chairman, denounced Zen as “too involved in political affairs”, a reference to the cardinal’s defence of democracy and support for commemorations of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, performed each year in the safety of Hong Kong.
Liu warned Chinese leaders that allowing the Pope to appoint bishops would lead to the church becoming the vanguard of anti-communist dissent as it did in Poland.
The three ordinations in defiance of Rome thus served as a definitive statement of the party’s resolve. Zen believes they were pushed through by Liu and his bureaucrats with the reluctant consent of the leadership. He says there is evidence the clergymen were coerced into going through the rituals.
Since then the Chinese position has hardened. Xinhua, the state news agency, said the development of Catholicism in China “called for the self-selection and ordination of bishops”.
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