Henan ordains Bishop Li Jianlin under Vatican-China deal, forcing out arrested underground bishop. Days earlier, Xuchang church padlocked for admitting children.
Newsroom (05/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) This morning in the historic cathedral of Weihui, northern Henan Province, Msgr. Francesco Li Jianlin, 50, was consecrated bishop of the Apostolic Prefecture of Xinxiang in a ceremony presided over by Beijing’s Bishop Joseph Li Shan, president of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.
The ordination, the second to take place during the current sede vacante following the death of Pope Francis, was conducted in accordance with the 2018 Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China. Pope Leo XIV formally approved the appointment on August 11, simultaneously accepting what the Vatican Press Office described as the “resignation” of the prefecture’s previous incumbent, Bishop Giuseppe Zhang Weizhu, 67.
Bishop Zhang, ordained with Roman approval in 1991 but never recognized by Beijing for refusing to join the Patriotic Association, has been subjected to repeated arrests and restrictions on his ministry. His most public clash with authorities came in May 2021 when police raided a seminary he had established for candidates unwilling to enroll in state-controlled formation programs.
Neither the official announcement from the Chinese Bishops’ Council nor the report published on chinacatholic.org, the Patriotic Association’s website, made any mention of Bishop Zhang. Photographs of the consecration show only officially recognized prelates.
Concelebrating today were the bishops of Henan’s four other dioceses – Zhengzhou, Anyang, and Nanyang – all in full communion with both Beijing and Rome under the terms of the Accord. The papal letter of appointment was not read; instead, a secretary proclaimed only the approval of the Chinese Bishops’ Council, in keeping with Beijing’s public insistence on the “independent and autonomous” administration of the Church in China.
The new bishop, born in Huixian in 1975, studied at the national seminary in Hebei and was ordained priest in 1999. Since 2011 he has served as deputy director and general secretary of Henan Province’s Committee for Catholic Ecclesiastical Affairs. In 2018, in that capacity and alongside Zhengzhou’s Bishop Wang Yuesheng, he co-signed the provincial circular banning all persons under 18 from entering churches or participating in religious activities – one of the strictest implementations in China of regulations aimed at preventing the transmission of faith to minors.
The concrete effects of that policy were visible just days before today’s ordination. On December 2, 2025, Catholics arriving for Mass at the church on Hupin Road in Xuchang, roughly 100 km south of Weihui, found the doors sealed with a heavy padlock. An official notice, bearing the seals of the Patriotic Association and the provincial Committee for Church Affairs – the body until recently headed by Bishop-elect Li himself – stated that the church had been closed for “rectification” after minors were discovered inside on November 30 playing musical instruments during a service.
The notice declared the presence of children a “violation of the compliance requirements governing the management of places of worship” and ordered suspension of all activities until further notice.
In Henan, enforcement of the minor ban has moved from periodic police checks to direct action by official Catholic bodies, eliminating even the need for uniformed intervention.
Today’s ordination thus closes one chapter opened more than three decades ago with the clandestine consecration of Bishop Zhang Weizhu and opens another under a prelate who, until August, was one of the principal provincial enforcers of restrictions on religious practice by minors.
For the Catholics of the Apostolic Prefecture of Xinxiang, the price of a bishop in full communion with Rome appears, for now, to be the public erasure of their underground pastor and the continued exclusion of their children from the church doors.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Asianews.it
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