The pastoral visit to China of Cardinal Danneels, archbishop of Malines-Bruxelles and president of the Belgian Bishops’ Conference, began on 28 March and will end on 6 April. This is the first official invitation made to a cardinal to visit the People’s Republic and came from the Chinese Deputy Minister responsible for religious affairs. The visit has various objectives: they include a meeting with the bishops, priests and seminarians of major seminaries in the country: those of Beijing (national seminary), Shenyang (province of Liaoning), Xi’an (province of Shaanxi) and Shangai, but it will also be an occasion to meet civil authorities and exponents of the main religions in China (Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism). The visit forms part of a programme of exchanges between the local churches of China and Belgium begun in 1985 with the visit of a delegation of Chinese Catholic bishops to Danneels; since then the exchanges have continued at annual intervals. More recently a group of Chinese priests was invited to study at the Catholic University of Louvain, and two of them were later ordained bishops in China. The sponsor of the exchange programme is the Institut Verbiest foundation and cultural centre of the “China-Europe” Institute of the University of Louvain which, on the occasion of the last visit of Chinese religious to Belgium in October 2004, made the proposal that Chinese priests be invited to complete their course of studies at Louvain.
