Photo Illustration by Emil Lendof/The Daily Beast The recent arrest of a Vatican-approved bishop, priests and seminarians in north-central China came as a shocking development, as religious persecution has intensified in the communist-led country under President Xi Jingping.
Police arrested Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu of Xinxiang May 21, a day after authorities detained seven priests and an unspecified number of seminarians. They are accused of violating new regulations governing religious affairs.
The bishop and the priests drew the ire of authorities by using an abandoned factory as a seminary for the formation of priests, ucanews.com reported.
They are charged with breaching new rules, implemented in May, which require all clergy to register with the state in order to serve Catholics while asking Catholics to elect their bishops democratically.
The rules also make it illegal to perform religious activities, including worship in places not registered or controlled by the state.
The arrests sparked condemnation from Christian and rights groups.
Mervyn Thomas, founding president of London-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide, said the new regulations on religious affairs are tools for oppressing religious communities, especially Christians.
“We call for the immediate and unconditional release of these Christians and all those detained across China on account of their religion or beliefs,” Mr Thomas said. “We also encourage the international community to raise this and other cases of arbitrary detention and harassment of religious leaders.”
Bishop Zhang has faced the ire of authorities for decades. Ordained secretly in 1991, Bishop Zhang was not approved by the state-aligned Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China and Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.
The bishop has been pressured by the state for years largely because of his allegiance to the Pope and refusal to join the state-aligned open church. He has been arrested several times, but was later released. The diocese has been in the custody of a government-appointed administrator since 2010.
The whereabouts of Bishop Zhang, the priests and the seminarians are unknown.
There are rising fears among China watchers that the communist regime has been moving slowly to crush religious groups, including Catholic and Protestant Churches that it deems illegal and a threat to party rule.