Tang's Task

A Chinese Catholic go-between

Of the eight Vatican-appointed bishops in mainland China, five are under house arrest and the fate of two others is unknown. That leaves Jesuit Dominic Tang, who in 1950 was appointed apostolic administrator, or temporary head, of the Canton diocese by Pope Pius XII and subsequently spent 22 years in a Communist prison. With church conditions improving dramatically in China, Tang was freed last year. Surprisingly, he also won the approval of the province's government to resume duties as administrator of his diocese.

Last week Pope John Paul II named Tang, 73, the country's only archbishop and formally assigned him to Canton. It was the Vatican's first permanent episcopal appointment in China since 1955.

Tang, who has been in Rome for several months, plans to return home this week and quietly resume his duties. As the sole bishop in China accepted by both the Vatican and the Communist regime, Tang is clearly supposed to help improve relations between Rome and Peking and with China's "patriotic" bishops who reject papal authority. But the prospects seem dim. Peking quickly denounced the appointment as "an interference in China's internal affairs," and the patriotic bishops called it "illegal" and "intolerable." qed

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