Julius Jia Zhiguo (born 5 June 1934) is an underground bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in the People's Republic of China.
Bishop Jia had been jailed for as long as 20 years, but had been released before he disappeared. During his confinement at home, his requests for medical treatment were denied by Chinese authorities.
In March 2004, the Cardinal Kung Foundation sent out a press release detailing the disappearance of Bishop Jia of Hebei Province in central China. Newspapers picked up the story, and within a week of Mr. Kung's press release, the bishop was freed.
In 2008, he was arrested again by local authorities on the morning of August 24, the twelfth such arrest since January 2004. [1]
In 2009, Chinese police re-arrested Bishop Jia Zhiguo of Zhengding, the most prominent leader of the Chinese "underground Church." The arrest came just as a special Vatican commission met in Rome to consider the situation facing the Church in China. [2]
Zhiguo was once again arrested by authorities in 2020. [3]
There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by priests, nuns, and other members of religious life in the Catholic Church. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the cases have involved many allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, acknowledgement and apologies by Church authorities, and revelations about decades of instances of abuse and attempts by Church officials to cover them up. The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Criminal cases for the most part do not cover sexual harassment of adults. The accusations of abuse and cover-ups began to receive public attention during the late 1980s. Many of these cases allege decades of abuse, frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.
The Catholic Patriotic Association, abbreviated CPA, is a state-managed nationalistic organization of Catholicism in the People's Republic of China. It was established in 1957 after a group of Chinese Catholics met in Beijing with officials from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Religious Affairs Bureau. It is the main organizational body of Catholics in China officially sanctioned and recognized by the Chinese government.
Hans Küng was a Swiss Catholic priest, theologian, and author. From 1995 he was president of the Foundation for a Global Ethic.
Joseph Zen Ze-kiun SDB is a cardinal of the Catholic Church from Hong Kong, who served as the sixth Bishop of Hong Kong. He was appointed cardinal in 2006, and has been outspoken on issues regarding human rights, political freedom, and religious liberty. His strong ties with the pro-democracy camp often attract criticism from the pro-Beijing camp and the government of the People's Republic of China. He retired on 15 April 2009, but remains a strong pro-democracy influence in Hong Kong. On 11 May 2022 he was arrested by the National Security Police and later that day released on bail.
Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei was the Catholic Bishop of Shanghai, China, from 1950 until his death in 2000. He spent 30 years in Chinese prisons for defying attempts by China's Communist government to control Catholics in the country through the government-approved Catholic Patriotic Association. At the time of his death he was the oldest member of the College of Cardinals.
The Catholic Church in China has a long and complicated history. John of Montecorvino was the first Roman Catholic missionary to reach China proper and first bishop of Khanbaliq during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368).
Donald William Wuerl is an American prelate, a cardinal, of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Washington, D.C., from 2006 to 2018. He was elevated by Pope John Paul II to serve as auxiliary bishop of Seattle (1986–1987), and bishop of Pittsburgh (1988–2006). He was named archbishop of Washington by Pope Benedict XVI and made a cardinal by him in 2010.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Shanghai is an ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in the Municipality of Shanghai, China. It was erected on December 13, 1933 as the Apostolic Vicariate of Shanghai by Pope Pius XI, and was later elevated to the rank of a diocese on April 11, 1946 by Pope Pius XII. The diocese is a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Nanking.
The Cardinal Kung Foundation is a not-for-profit Roman Catholic organization based in Stamford, Connecticut. Founded in 1994 by Joseph Kung, nephew of the late Cardinal Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei, the foundation monitors the treatment of Catholics in China and that portion of the Catholic Church in China that remains loyal to the Pope. The foundation's primarily tool is to supply news reports to news agencies about various activities in China and has been instrumental in protecting and aiding many notable Catholics in China.
John Han Dingxiang was an underground Roman Catholic bishop of Yongnian, a division of Hebei province, in China. Han was detained for much of his ministry for his loyalty to the Vatican as opposed to the Chinese government-controlled Roman Catholic Church.
John Tong Hon is a prelate of the Catholic Church from Hong Kong. A cardinal since 2012, he was auxiliary bishop of Hong Kong from 1996 to 2008, then coadjutor bishop of the diocese for a year, and Bishop of Hong Kong from 2009 to 2017. In January 2019, he became the apostolic administrator of the diocese, in a caretaker role, after the death of his successor, Michael Yeung.
Pope Pius XII and the Church in China involves relations of the Holy See with China from 1939 to 1958. The Vatican recognized Chinese rites in 1939, elevated the first Chinese cardinal in 1946, and established a Chinese hierarchy.
Persecutions against the Catholic Church took place during the papacy of Pope Pius XII (1939–1958). Pius' reign coincided with World War II (1939–1945), followed by the commencement of the Cold War and the accelerating European decolonisation. During his papacy, the Catholic Church faced persecution under Fascist and Communist governments.
There are no official bilateral relations between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Holy See. The Holy See instead recognizes the Republic of China (Taiwan) as the representative of China ever since the establishment of relations with the ROC government in 1942.
The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Europe has affected several dioceses in European nations. Italy is an exceptional case as the 1929 Lateran Treaty gave the Vatican legal autonomy from Italy, giving the clergy recourse to Vatican rather than Italian law.
Bishop Peter Joseph Fan Xueyan was a Chinese Roman Catholic priest and bishop who lived in China during the 20th century. He was bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Baoding.
James Lin Xili was a Chinese underground Roman Catholic bishop of Wenzhou. His 1992 ordination as the First Bishop of Wenzhou was never recognized by the government of the People's Republic of China.
Joseph Fan Zhongliang S.J., also known as Josephus Vei Zong Leong, was a Chinese Roman Catholic bishop in the Diocese of Shanghai in China.
Thaddeus Ma Daqin is a Chinese Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Shanghai from 2014 until 2023.
Political theology in China refers to the religious beliefs and principles that motivate the politics of China. For two millennia, China was organized on a Confucian understanding of religion and politics, often discussed in terms of Confucian political philosophy. At various points throughout its history, Chinese Buddhism presented an alternative to the political import of Confucianism. However, since the mid-twentieth century, communist understandings of religion have dominated the discourse.