At a ceremony commemorating the event, Fu Tieshan, president of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, said the Chinese Catholic Church has successfully established and maintained its "holy sovereignty."

Before 1949, China's Catholic churches were run by foreign missionaries, who ultimately took their orders from the Pope in Rome. In the second year of the establishment of New China, a nationwide campaign was initiated by a group Catholics in Southwest China's Sichuan Province who decided to push for a new church that would manage its affairs according to principles of self-government, self-support and self-propagation of the Gospel.

"The principle of running church affairs independently guarantees that Chinese Catholics can live in harmony with their follow countrymen," Fu said. "It guarantees that China's Catholic Church will not be subject to outside disturbances and can thus devote itself completely to the spreading of the Gospel."

Fu yesterday reiterated that running the church independently does not mean Chinese Catholics have severed ties with the Pope as far as faith is concerned.

"What we mean by running church affairs independently refers to political, economic and administrative affairs, not to doctrines and canons," Fu explained. "By claiming independence, we mean that foreign forces must not interfere in religious affairs in China, hold leadership positions in China's churches or interfere in China's internal affairs in the name of religion.

"We do not mean to be unorthodox in regard to religious practices or beliefs," he added.

The Vatican in October aroused anger among China's Catholics by canonizing a group of martyrs who had participated in the colonization and invasion of China before 1949.

Wang Zhaoguo, head of the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Wednesday praised the Chinese Catholic Church's opposition to the Vatican's canonization, saying that it "safeguarded national interest and dignity as well as the purity of the nation's Catholics."

He encouraged the priests and Catholics in China to be more determined in following the principle of running the Catholic Church independently and to enhance the education of young clergies.

Official statistics indicate that China now has more than 5,000 Catholic churches, which claim a total of 5 million Catholics. The nation's Catholic theological seminaries have produced more than 1,200 priests since 1986.

(China Daily 11/30/2000)