“Right now, those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese,” a senior Vatican official has said.
Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, praised the Communist state as “extraordinary”, saying: “You do not have shantytowns, you do not have drugs, young people do not take drugs”. Instead, there is a “positive national conscience”.
The bishop told the Spanish-language edition of Vatican Insider that in China “the economy does not dominate politics, as happens in the United States, something Americans themselves would say.”
Bishop Sánchez Sorondo said that China was implementing Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ better than many other countries and praised it for defending Paris Climate Accord. “In that, it is assuming a moral leadership that others have abandoned”, he added.
He accused US president Donald Trump of being “manipulated” by global oil firms, and said that, as opposed to those who follow “liberal thought”, the Chinese are working for the greater good of the planet.
Full story at The Catholic Herald.
This bishop clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
“No stems, no seeds that we don’t need, Acapulco Gold is …” Sorry, I couldn’t resist it
This will not sit well with many posters on this site. While I recognize omissions [eg freedom of speach and the press] there are some valid points here [no drug problem]
Mike …. They are constantly executing rug dealers. The good Bishop seems to have been given a two week “Potempkin Village” tour and come back an expert. This kind of thing happened with the USSR, Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany
the peruvian experience with the chinese holds an interesting tale. after long periods of strikes from miners, some ore mines were sold to simply quit dealing with the shutdown. the peruvian miners were thrilled at the prospect of new bosses from the workers’ capital of the world who would treat them with justice. they were horrified when the peruvian government allowed the chinese-owned mines to operate their own police forces in a sort of extra-constitutional zone. attempts to strike or protest were met with severe force with no appeal to peruvian law. workers realized they were far worse off under the new regime.
Is Bishop Sorondo mad? Could someone ask him how much China contributed to Peter’s Pence last year compared to the USA, which he relentlessly criticizes? And as to relative air quality, has he been in Beijing lately? Someone should be appointed his keeper, before he shoots off his mouth and makes a damned fool of himself again. To add to the hilarity, he spews his nonsense in Cuba, that bastion of freedom.
Maria, Sedis Sapientiae, ora pro eo—expeditissime.
Let the good bishop move to China and live there for a good while. Then let us ask him if he still believes this nonsense. Then again, this assumes he wouldn’t be as insulated from reality as he is now…
While the Chinese Government is demolishing 1500 Christian chapels and churches in Chekiang Province alone, this bishop is spouting total nonsense. The Chinese Government is officially atheist.
He should have googled Housing Problems in China or Drug use in China
This papacy has sped through stupid, into and beyond crazy, arriving at outright Marxist propaganda.
Shame on you, your “Excellency.”
Vatican Bishop and chancellor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo has an agenda under Pope Francis to improve relations with China and to normalize relations with the Chinese Patriotic Association. Therefore the devious lies and betrayal of the suffering churches.
Yikes!!! Another Bishop who has lost all credibility.
In the article published on the same subject in today’s edition of the National Catholic Register, Bishop Sorondo is identified as an “Argentinian,” but does not specify whether there were pre-exiting ties with the Holy Father during his tenure as a Cardinal in Buenos Aries.
Additional clarification on this would be welcome.
Whenever I hear another of Sanchez-Sorondo’s proclamations, I can’t help but think of Orwell’s Animal Farm, specifically Napoleon’s propaganda minister, Squealer the pig.
. . . then again, maybe just proof of the old saying that we all have that one crazy uncle (or so say my nieces and nephews). Crazy Marcelo.
One of our greatest popes, Pope Pius XII, was not afraid to take communist China on. These are a few of his essays on China: Beatification of twenty-nine Chinese Martyrs, November 27, 1946; Apostolic Letter Cupimus Imprimis, January 18, 1952; Encyclical Ad Sinarum gentem, October 7, 1954; and Encyclical Ad Apostolorum principis, June 29, 1958.
China remains communist and created their Patriotic Catholic Church as a way to usurp the One True Faith. The Jesuits and Maryknollers have ignored Vatican instructions for decades. Now with a Jesuit pope, they might now get their way and the thousands of Catholics who refused to renounce The Faith and died, sent to laogais and mental institutions, etc., can be told that it was all for naught.
What…
Its voices like his that deceive the masses of naïve and cause them confusion and to lose what little faith they had. Who needs more enemies with a leader like this?
As reported in CRUX dated 07th February, a leading commentator on the Church in China said a Vatican official’s proclamation that the Communist state “is the best implementer of the Church’s social doctrine” is making “a laughing stock of the Church. ” Argentine Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, said in an interview with the Spanish-language edition of Vatican Insider that Beijing “is defending the dignity of the person,” and “that China is evolving very well,” even calling the country “extraordinary. ” Meanwhile as reported in the Catholic Herald of 6th February 2018, The Global Times, a Chinese government-run newspaper said in an editorial that the Pope had made…