Fraternal visit and study trip in China

Zhujiajiao Catholic church

From 29 May to 3 July brother Matteo went to China to learn better the Chinese language, for research on the history of Christianity in that country, and especially to forge ties of acquaintance and friendship with the Church in Shanghai and the surrounding area

St Francis Xavier Catholic church (Dongjiadu)

Mgr Aloysius Jin Luxian, bishop of Shanghai

Shanghai, St Ignace Catholic cathedral (Xujiahui)

 From 29 May to 3 July brother Matteo went to China to learn better the Chinese language, for research on the history of Christianity in that country, and especially to forge ties of acquaintance and friendship with the Church in Shanghai and the surrounding area.

His reception everywhere was surprising: from the Catholic family that gave him space in their own apartment, to the Catholic parish of St Francis Xavier, where the pastor, father Joseph Lu Yuchun and the parishioners offered an atmosphere of daily fraternal communion, to the Protestant community, where pastor Guo Feng organized an opportunity for exchanging views with young people animated by an ecumenical spiritual search. Thanks to this warm hospitality occasions were not wanting for meaningful meetings with many persons of the city’s Catholic and Protestant churches.

A meeting with the 95-year-old “official” bishop of Shanghai, Aloysius Jin Luxian, Jesuit, was especially of great emotion, as br. Matteo wrote in a letter to the community:

“This meeting, which I had been hoping to have for a long time and which took place almost without my seeking it, was a highly touching moment. For half an hour I was able to converse in Italian and French, two of the many languages that the bishop knows well, with one of the 'rebuilders' of the Catholic Church in China after the cultural revolution. I briefly described to him the community, our life as monks in Bose, our solicitude for the Church in China. He showed himself to be a man with a great capacity to listen and to be interested. To my assurance that the community prays for the Church in China every week he was visibly touched; he thanked me and added: ‘Pray for me, because it is not easy to be a bishop in China…’ I told him how happy I was that pope Benedict XVI had invited him and three other Chinese bishops to participate at the Synod of Bishops in 2005, a great sign of recognition of his ministry, after so many years of painful incomprehension. He said simply, with a note of regret, ‘The government did not permit me to go to Rome’.”