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China, with its many millions of Catholics, is high on Pope Francis’ list of countries he hopes to visit one day. As the head of papal diplomacy, Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin recently said, if there were “openness” from the Chinese government, the Pope would go there “immediately.” But for the time being, and despite a significant rapprochement between Beijing and Rome in 2018 with the signing of an agreement on the appointment of bishops, such a trip seems premature.
However, should Francis or one of his successors one day succeed in breaking through the great ideological and diplomatic wall that blocks all papal visits to the Middle Kingdom, he would not be the first pontiff to visit China. Indeed, the pioneer in China was Pope Paul VI, who stopped over in Hong Kong for just over three hours on December 4, 1970.
An island with a foot in two worlds
Of course, the “Fragrant Harbor” was then a colony under the protection of Queen Elizabeth II’s crown, and remained so until its handover on July 1, 1997. The United Kingdom occupied the strategic island of Hong Kong, which it had wrested from the Qing dynasty at the end of the highly dishonorable First Opium War (1839-1842). And it was indeed the local authorities, notably Hong Kong’s colonial secretary Sir Hugh Norman-Walker, who welcomed the pontiff. However, the course of the visit shows that it was actually the Chinese people he had come to meet.
The papal plane had already passed through Iran, Pakistan, the Philippines, Samoa, Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea on Paul VI’s longest and last international trip. It made the tricky landing at the old Kai Tak airport in the middle of the afternoon. The pontiff then boarded a helicopter, landing in the middle of the Happy Valley stadium, after which he was paraded in a jeep, accompanied by Bishop Francis Hsu, the first Chinese bishop of Hong Kong, whom Paul VI had appointed a year earlier.
“All men are brothers”
At a Mass attended by some 40,000 people at the famous racecourse, the pontiff clearly expressed the purpose of his visit.
“We are pleased to take the occasion of the apostolic journey […] to make a visit, howsoever, to the largest Chinese diocese in the world.” His homily goes on to stress the role of the Church, whose mission is “to love.” He added, “While we are saying these simple and sublime words, we have around us — we almost feel it — all the Chinese people wherever they may be.”
Finally, he concludes by explaining that if a pope “comes to this far eastern land, for the first time in history,” it is because “Christ is a teacher, a shepherd, a loving redeemer for China too.”
“Happy as a sunbeam”
No sooner had the pontiff celebrated Mass when he was on his way to Sri Lanka, the final stop on his journey. On the tarmac at Kai Tak, he gave a very brief speech in which he said that Hong Kong is “so far away in distance, so near in spirit.” Saying he was “as happy as a sunbeam” (a comment in Italian missing in the official English translation), he quoted an adage from Chinese wisdom: “All men are brothers” — and thus, in retrospect, anticipated Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli tutti (2020). For the Chinese, this saying promotes development based on justice, prosperity, and peace.
Just the opposite of what the inhabitants of the People’s Republic of China seem to experience just a few miles away. Since 1966, the country had been in the midst of the “Cultural Revolution,” Mao Zedong’s ideological takeover of the regime that resulted in millions of deaths.
Paul VI never mentioned the regime directly, but the South China Morning Post reported with emotion the words spoken in Cantonese by the pontiff at the end of his speech: “T’in Chue Po Yau,” which means, “May God bless you all!”
And today we celebrate...