This book explores the Chinese Catholic Church as a whole as well as focusing on particular aspects of its activities, including diplomacy, politics, leadership, pilgrimage, youths, and non-Chinese Catholics in China. It discusses Sino-Vatican relations and the rationale behind the decisions taken by Pope Francis with regard to the appointment of bishops in China. The book also examines important changes and personalities in the Chinese Church, the Catholic organizations, and the Catholic communities in the Church, offering a key read for researchers and graduate students studying the Chinese Catholic Church, the Church in Asia, and religion in contemporary China.

This book documents the history of religious persecution, especially focusing on early Jewish and Christian experiences and the culmination of horrors in the Nazi era, in which six million Jews, over a million Catholics, and many others were put to death for their beliefs. The book then focuses on the many types of religious intolerance in the world today, particularly the genocide against Christians in the Middle East and Africa, and resurgent Anti-Semitism in the Middle East, Europe and even the United States. The book concludes by discussing how we work together to preserve the ancient civilizations that provided roots for both Christians and Jews so that their populace and historical artifacts are safe from destruction and their cultural and religious heritage are preserved.

This book explores the Chinese Catholic Church as a whole as well as focusing on particular aspects of its activities, including diplomacy, politics, leadership, pilgrimage, youths, and non-Chinese Catholics in China. It discusses Sino-Vatican relations and the rationale behind the decisions taken by Pope Francis with regard to the appointment of bishops in China. The book also examines important changes and personalities in the Chinese Church, the Catholic organizations, and the Catholic communities in the Church, offering a key read for researchers and graduate students studying the Chinese Catholic Church, the Church in Asia, and religion in contemporary China.

By 1952 the Chinese Communist Party had suppressed all organized resistance to its regime and stood unopposed, or so it has been believed. Internal party documents declassified just long enough for historian Paul Mariani to send copies out of China disclose that one group deemed anenemy of the state held out after the others had fallen. A party report from Shanghai marked top-secret reveals a determined, often courageous resistance by the local Catholic Church. Drawing on centuries of experience in struggling with the Chinese authorities, the Church was proving a stubborn match for the party.

Mariani""tells the story of how Bishop (later Cardinal) Ignatius Kung Pinmei, the Jesuits, and the Catholic Youth resisted the regime s punishing assault on the Shanghai Catholic community and refused to renounce the pope and the Church in Rome. Acting clandestinely, mirroring tactics used by the previously underground CCP, Shanghai s Catholics persevered until 1955, when the party arrested Kung and 1,200 other leading Catholics. The imprisoned believers were later shocked to learn that the betrayal had come from within their own ranks.

Though the CCP could not eradicate the Catholic Church in China, it succeeded in dividing it. Mariani s secret history traces the origins of a deep split in the Chinese Catholic community, where relations between the Patriotic and underground churches remain strained even today.