Pope Invokes Italian Saint In Asking China to Open Up To Christ

The Pope while on his vacation went to OLIES Italy. The Ratzinger Forum (Has great pics and stories here incuding this translated piece from an Italian news agency on the Holy Father's Remarks on China.

CHINA MUST 'OPEN UP TO CHRIST'

Pope Benedict XVI says cultures reach maturity in the Lord

Oies, August 5 -

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday said China was becoming an important political and economic force but must open the doors to Christianity.

The pontiff made his comments while speaking in the small church of the Alto Adige mountain town of Oies, the birthplace of Italian missionary St Giuseppe Freinademetz, who spent most of his life in China. ''We know that China is becoming increasingly more important politically and economically, and also in the life of ideas,'' the pope said. ''It's important that this great continent opens up to the gospel of Christ,'' said the pope, speaking three days ahead of a ceremony to inaugurate the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

''St Giuseppe Freinademetz showed us that faith does not alienate any culture or people, because all cultures are waiting for Christ and will not be destroyed. In the Lord, they reach their maturity,'' he said.

Speaking of Freinademetz, who set off for China in 1879 at the age of 27, the pope said the saint ''identified with these people and with the certainty that they will open up to the faith of Christ''. Pope Benedict is currently on holiday in Bressanone, Alto Adige, with his brother, Georg Ratzinger. During his Angelus service on Sunday, the pope sent China his best wishes for a successful Olympics and called for the Games to serve as an example of peaceful co-existence among people of different backgrounds.

The Vatican will be represented at the opening ceremony by Hong Kong bishop, John Tong Hon. The pope has called for greater dialogue with the officially atheist state, making it clear he wants to eventually restore full diplomatic ties with Beijing.

Ties were severed in 1951, soon after the Communist Revolution. United States President George W. Bush expressed the pope's same concerns in an interview published on Tuesday. Ahead of his trip to the opening ceremony in Beijing, Bush told the Washington Post that he also plans to call for greater religious freedom in China. ''My main objective in my discussions on religious freedom is to remind this new generation of leadership that religion is not to be feared but to be welcomed in society,'' he said.

Who is this Saint the Pope is invoking. Well on this page of the Ratzinger Forum we learn (see bottom of page)

Joseph Freinademetz was born on April 15, 1852, in Oies, a small hamlet of five houses situated in the Dolomite Alps of northern Italy. The region, known as South Tyrol, was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He was baptised on the day he was born, and he inherited from his family a simple but tenacious faith.

While Joseph was studying theology in the diocesan seminary of Bressanone (Brixen), he began to think seriously of the foreign missions as a way of life. He was ordained a priest on July 25, 1875, and assigned to the community of Saint Martin very near his own home, where he soon won the hearts of the people. However, the call to missionary service did not go away. Just two years after ordination he contacted Fr. Arnold Janssen, the founder of a mission house which quickly developed into the Society of the Divine Word (SVD, after its Latin initials).

With his bishop's permission, Joseph entered the mission house in Steyl, Netherlands, in August 1878. On March 2, 1879, he received his mission cross and departed for China with Fr. John Baptist Anzer, another Divine Word Missionary. Five weeks later they arrived in Hong Kong, where they remained for two years, preparing themselves for the next step.

In 1881 they travelled to their new mission in South Shantung, a province with 12 million inhabitants and only 158 Christians. Those were hard years, marked by long, arduous journeys, assaults by bandits, and the difficult work of forming the first Christian communities. As soon as a community was just barely developed an instruction from the Bishop would arrive, telling him to leave everything and start anew.

Soon Joseph came to appreciate the importance of a committed laity, especially catechists, for first evangelisation. He dedicated much energy to their formation and prepared a catechetical manual in Chinese. At the same time, together with Anzer (who had become bishop) he put great effort into the preparation, spiritual formation and ongoing education of Chinese priests and other missionaries.

His whole life was marked by an effort to become a Chinese among the Chinese, so much so that he wrote to his family: “I love China and the Chinese. I want to die among them and be laid to rest among them.” In 1898, Freinademetz was sick with laryngitis and had the beginnings of tuberculosis as a result of his heavy workload and many other hardships.

So at the insistence of the bishop and the other priests he was sent for a rest to Japan, with the hope that he could regain his health. He returned to China somewhat recuperated, but not fully cured. When the bishop had to travel outside of China in 1907, Freinademetz took on the added burden of the administration of the diocese.

During this time there was a severe outbreak of typhus. Joseph, like a good shepherd, offered untiring assistance and visited many communities until he himself became infected. He returned to Taikia, the seat of the diocese, where he died on January 28, 1908. He was buried at the twelfth station on the Way of the Cross, and his grave soon became a pilgrimage site for Christians. Freinademetz learned how to discover the greatness and beauty of Chinese culture and to love deeply the people to whom he had been sent.

He dedicated his life to proclaiming the gospel message of God's love for all peoples, and to embodying this love in the formation of Chinese Christian communities. He animated these communities to open themselves in solidarity with the surrounding inhabitants. And he encouraged many of the Chinese Christians to be missionaries to their own people as catechists, religious, nuns and priests. His life was an expression of his motto: “The language that all people understand is that of love.”