Tug of war between government and faithful over burial of Tangshan bishop Liu Jinghe
Beijing (
AsiaNews) - For two days, the faithful of the Diocese of Tangshan (Hebei ) have
been keeping vigil over the body of Msgr. Paul Liu Jinghe , who
died last December 11. The
vigil in the cathedral is not just about prayer : they want to stop the Tangshan
police from forcibly taking the corpse to bury it in common ground and not in
the Catholic cemetery, according to the deceased bishop's wishes.
The
tension in the diocese is very high: yesterday all the parish priests were
forced to take part in a meeting with the State Administration for Religious Affairs , after they published an open letter . The website of the diocese was shut down for a while and cel phones placed under
control. Now the website is working.
The
faithful expect the police to raid the cathedral today forcing the common
burial of the remains of the bishop who
died at 92 years of age.
Bishop
Liu Jinghe, who died on December 11 , had been a "patriotic"
bishop ordained without Holy See mandate, but later reconciled with the Pope ,
and lived as a witness to the faith, resisting the pressure of the regime and Patriotic
Association and refusing to participate in illicit ordinations .
Before
dying, he expressed a wish to be buried in the Catholic cemetery of Lulong ,
where the first bishop of the diocese, the Dutch Lazarist Msgr. Ernst Geurts, who died in 1940 are buried.
In
the past, many priests and nuns were also buried there. It is probable that Msgr. Liu's desire to be buried next
to Msgr. Geurts
and other missionaries is emphasize his unity and belonging to the universal
Church.
In
the '50s, with the rise to power of the Communist Party, the cemetery of Lulong
was desecrated and ordered destroyed. After
a period of neglect, the vast plot of land - about 2.7 acres - was converted
into agricultural land. Bishop
Liu has asked authorities many times to be returned the ground, but only in
1993 did was the diocese given permission to use a small part to rebury the remains
of Msgr. Geurts and
other priests and nuns.
On the death of Mgr. Liu
, the diocese asked authorities permission to bury their bishop in Lulong , as
was his wish , but the government refused point blank, proposing a maximum
contribution of 200 thousand yuan (about 33 thousand dollars) for the purchase
of other ground to use as a cemetery.
From
the legal point of view, with a law passed by Deng Xiaoping, all land
requisitioned by the Party in the past, if they do not have a public use ,
should be returned to its rightful owners . The
return of the land is very rare, with the party members more often using property
for speculative purposes.
Also
in this case it is not clear why the government does not want to return the old
cemetery to its rightful owners, rewarding farmers who still use the land .
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07/02/2019 17:28
10/08/2013
