The Catholic Church in Macau continues to attract believers from mainland China. The territory is the “starting point” to enter the country, when it “opens” to the work of the missionaries.
The Catholic Church in Macao continues to attract believers from the interior of China and for the Comboni religious order the territory is the “starting point” to enter the country, when it is “opened” to the work of the missionaries.
Although it cannot enter mainland China, the religious congregation of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus is working in Macao, the region where it settled three decades ago.
Carlos Malásquez Quispe, a Peruvian from Lima, is the parish priest in charge of the São José do Operário church, in Iao Hon, a neighborhood located in the poorest and most densely populated area of Macao, right at the gates of China.
The church, a contemporary building designed in the late 1990s by the Portuguese architect Luís Nagy, is surrounded by old buildings. Everything around accuses the passage of time. The façade, facing the border that separates Macao from the neighboring city of Zhuhai, is shaped like two open arms, as if simulating a welcoming hug to those who live on the other side.
And that is the intention of the Comboni Missionaries, points out Malásquez Quispe: “Our objective was not necessarily to stay here in Macao, we aimed at mainland China, so this is just a starting point (…). If China opens up and missionaries are allowed in, we will immediately go looking for the poorest areas, the rural areas to do our service.”
In 1951, with Mao Zedong’s communist regime in power, Pope Pius XII’s excommunication of Beijing-appointed bishops led China and the Vatican to cut diplomatic relations. China then established the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which led to the faithful having to choose between it, with bishops appointed by the regime, or the Catholic Church, loyal to the Pope, then in hiding.
In recent years there has been a rapprochement between the two parties, with the signing of an agreement for the appointment of bishops. There are an estimated 12 million Catholics in the country.
However, the testimonies of those who arrive from the other side to attend the religious service in São José do Operário reveal strict control by the authorities.
“A few days ago we had some visitors from mainland China sharing the experience of how the government increasingly controls what happens and what is said within the church, and they mentioned something we already knew a few years ago. , which is the policy of not allowing minors to enter the church and attend Sunday schools”, says the parish priest.
The interest in attending Mass in a “true Catholic Church”, underlines the religious, has brought several Chinese faithful to Macao. At the moment, São José do Operário is one of the few churches in the special administrative region that offers services in Mandarin. The other is the church of Nossa Senhora de Fátima, also in the northern part of the peninsula.
“A man who came here feels that the Church here in Macao is Catholic, it is officially Catholic and not controlled,” observes Carlos Malásquez Quispe, without being able to specify how many members of that parish come from the interior of China.
“One of the things that also surprised me is that [os fiéis] mentioned is that even when communion is given at Mass, the priest cannot say the words ‘the body of Christ,’” the priest adds.
Although the Comboni order is limited to this fragment of Chinese territory, there is already an established link with the religious on the other side of the border, through the Fen Xiang (FX) project —which means ‘sharing’ in Chinese— which “has as The aim is to lay the foundations for the presence of the Comboni Missionaries in the Chinese context”, according to the website of the congregation, founded in the Italian city of Verona in 1867, and present in 42 countries.
“FX has opened different fronts and spaces for collaboration with the Church in China, both with the clandestine community and with the public one,” it reads.
In this sense, Macao has been a kind of support base, receiving, through a program organized by the local diocese, people from the interior of China “to have spiritual and catechetical formation.”
“It is helpful, it is also a way for them to feel that we are connected, to know the reality in which they live and to help in any way we can”, he explains.
Malásquez Quispe also says that through these religious groups it is possible to “send some financial aid to places in need.”
“This is another difficulty we have, which is, from here, sending money to mainland China. It has been difficult, because there are some orphanages and leper colonies that we have not been able to help in this period ”, he declares, referring to the almost three years of the covid-19 pandemic in which border restrictions were imposed.
As for the local mission, says the Peruvian, the Catholic community is growing “slowly and continuously”, with around 140 baptisms carried out last year.
According to statistics from the Diocese of Macau, at the end of 2020, the number of Catholics in the territory was 32,013, the majority members of the Chinese community.
One of the greatest adversities in the region are the “barriers built, consciously or not, in Macao society.” Malásquez Quispe explains that, “for security reasons”, the entry of more and more residential buildings into the territory requires the registration of visitors, which turns out to be an obstacle for the missionary work.
“This increases the isolation of people a little more (…), who already live in a small place, Macau,” he says.
Source: Observadora
