Easter Vigil-Beijing 2011

I apologize for the poor camera skills in advance)

This is the Easter Vigil mass at the South Cathedral (nantang) in Beijing in 2011. This is the church that Matteo Ricci founded when he came to Beijing during the late Ming dynasty. It is not the first Catholic church in China, but it is one of the oldest. Its modern appearance and size is not original to Matteo Ricci, but after reconstruction and expansion. This church was shut down during the cultural revolution and reopened for worship, I think maybe in 1981.

The parish is within the jurisdiction of the chinese catholic patriotic association, which is the state-run body that governs catholics in China. The bishop, Joseph Li Shan (visible in the video at one point flicking holy water on the crowd), received approval from Rome for his ordination in 2007, however, he has been threatened with excommunication under canon law in the past year as a result of his participation in bishops' ordinations not approved by Rome but called for by the Chinese government (whether or not he is actually excommunicated depends upon whether he was forced to do or whether he did it by his own non-coerced choice, and he has not made it publicly clear which one it was).

There were over 400 adult baptisms at the mass, which is not for the whole of Beijing but just for this one parish, and this was also not considered a high number in comparison with other years. There are extremely high conversion rates to Christianity in China (although most of these are to protestant and evangelical churches). Since communism took over in 1949, the population of Catholics in China has multiplied by more than four times (3 million in 1949, and now 6 million in the state-registered church and an estimated 8 million in the underground church). Some have speculated that within the next century if current rates continue up to 1/3 of the Chinese populace will become Christian, making China then possessing the largest number of Christians of any country in the world (1/3 of 1.3 billion is 433 million, while the US population is only 300 million). While people turn their back on Christianity in the west, it's growing in other places.

"Then I saw before me the Heavenly Spouse, and He spoke to me for a long time. He said, among other things that this translation of the Church from one place to another meant that she would seem to be in complete decline.But she would rise again; even if there remained but one Catholic, the Church would conquer again because she does not rest on human counsels and intelligence." -Blessed Anne Katherine Emmerich (1774-1824)

All Glory to God

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