Five young Chinese baptised in Bologna on Feast of Epiphany

In Italy for university study, the students encountered the Christian faith through a journey shared with the monastic community of the Piccola Famiglia dell'Assunta di Montetauro. Card. Zuppi: ‘Sign of a community of believers from every nation’.

Bologna (AsiaNews) - Five Chinese university students yesterday marked teh Feast of the Epiphany by receiving the sacraments of Christian initiation in the Cathedral of Bologna, during the Mass of the Peoples presided over by the Archbishop, Card. Matteo Zuppi.

The celebration included eight languages, and was attended not only by the Catholics of Bologna but also by a dozen international Catholic communities present in the Italian city.

Significantly, on the feast that looks to the East, where the three Magi came from to honour Jesus, it was precisely five young Chinese university students, in Bologna for studies, who received baptism, communion and confirmation and thus entered the community of the Catholic Church.

Gregorio, Maria, Chiara, Teresa and Lucia, these are their Christian names, have been prepared over the past two years in contact with the Piccola Famiglia dell'Assunta of Montetauro (Rimini), the monastic community spread throughout the Romagna region with family houses that take in disabled people and that have activated a virtuous contact with the Chinese communities in the area. 

A large group of monks and nuns from Montetauro were also present, accompanied by their founder Fr Lanfranco Bellavista and the Chinese presbyter Savio Yan, who has lived in their community for many years and specifically accompanied young catechumens in catechesis.

Card. Zuppi stressed in his homily that the people present in the cathedral is the Church as it should be, that is, a community of believers called from different nations. The cardinal also recalled the fact that the five young people came from the great and noble nation of China.

The event in Bologna is ideally in continuity with the initiative promoted last 3 December by AsiaNews and the PIME Centre with the Chinese Catholic community in Milan, where a number of young Chinese people also spoke and gave testimony of their faith.