Mgr Casimir Wang Milu, retired bishop of Tianshui, has died
The underground bishop spent ten years in prison. In 2003 he was suspended by the Holy See. He was admitted to hospital in late January. The funeral should take place this Saturday, 18 February.
Tianshui (AsiaNews) – Mgr Casimir Wang Milu, retired bishop of Tianshui (Qinzhou), Gansu Province, died at around 1 am this morning. He was 74.
The prelate’s funeral is planned for this Saturday, but since he was an underground bishop, not recognised by Beijing, that still needs to be cleared with the authorities.
In late January, Mgr Wang suffered a hemorrhage and pneumonia. He was admitted to a hospital in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu Province.
He was secretly ordained bishop in 1981 in Qinzhou (Tianshui) by Mgr Peter Joseph Fan Xueyan of Baoding (Hebei), a major figure in the underground Church. Two years later, he was arrested in Beijing and sentenced to ten years in prison.
The people who knew him say he was full of evangelising zeal and was very loyal to the pope.
In the past, he was suspected of abusing the special powers conferred by the Holy See to the underground Church to ordain bishops without papal mandate. The latter were repealed by Benedict XVI in his Letter of to Chinese Catholics (2007).
The Holy See suspended Mgr Wang in 2003. After that, he retired, but remained in Gangu County, Gansu.
Born in 1942, Mgr Wang was ordained a priest in 1979.
His younger brother, John Wang Ruowang was secretly ordained in 2011 as the ordinary bishop of Tianshui.
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14/03/2017 17:40
