Cardinal Parolin pays tribute to Vatican diplomat in China
December 28, 2015
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, has written the foreword to a new book about Cardinal Celso Costantini (1876-1958), the Vatican’s first apostolic delegate to China.
Cardinal Constantini served in China from 1922 to 1933, during the years when the mainland was a republic, after the fall of the Qing Dynasty (1912) and before the Communist takeover (1949).
Cardinal Parolin said that the prelate’s “objectives were clear: to separate the Catholic missions from the harsh conditioning of colonial powers, particularly by France, which was jealous of its protectorate; ‘to plant’ the Church by entrusting her to indigenous clergy; to inject the lymph of the Gospel into the veins of the great Chinese civilization by eliminating foreign bodies imported from the West.”
The author of the new book, Christian Gabrieli, “also deserves credit for revealing the utmost care, immeasurable commitment and boundless love of the Bishops of Rome for the Chinese people, just as Pope Francis attests today,” wrote Cardinal Parolin.
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