Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Baoding (Fides Service) - Two Catholic priests, Father Lu Genjun, aged 42, and Father Cheng Xiaoli, aged 40, arrested on 14 May were released four days later on May 18. The priests were arrested in Anguo, 200 km south west of Beijing in Hebei province as they were about to give talks at a Day of Study for local Catholic young married couples on Catholic moral theology and natural family planning. Before the meeting even started the police appeared. The priests were taken in custody and the people who had come for the meeting were sent away.
Father Lu Genjun was ordained in 1990 for Baoding diocese where he was in charge since the Bishop James Su Zhimin, was put in prison. Hebei is the part of mainland China with most Catholics, estimated to be more than one million. This was not the first time Father Lu Genjun was arrested. He was arrested on Palm Sunday 1998 and held for a brief period and then again in Holy Week 2001. On 13 April that same year he was sent to Gao Yang labour camp for three years.
Father Francis Cheng Xiaoli, ordained in 1991 for Anguo diocese (Hebei), which has no Bishop since the death of 80 year old Bishop Liu Difeng in Chengde prison (Hebei) in 1992. Since then Father Francis Cheng Xiaoli has been responsible for the diocese
The Bishop of Baoding James Su Zhimin, aged 72, was arrested on 8 October 1997, and his auxiliary Bishop Francesco An Shuxin, aged 54 had been arrested the year before in 1996. In all these years no one, family members, Amnesty International Red Cross has been allowed to visit either of the Bishops.
Last November local Catholics recognised Bishop Su Zhimin in a hospital in Hebei where he was undergoing an eye operation, but they were not allowed to speak to him. After the operation the Bishop disappeared again and no one knows where he or Bishop An Shuxin are now, whether they are still alive or have already returned to the Father in Heaven. (Agenzia Fides 29/5/2004; Righe 28; Parole 391)
