BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- China needs more clergies to serve the
development of Catholicism in the country, which has seen its believers swell
from no more than 2 million five decades ago to more than 5.3 million currently,
a political advisor said on Saturday.
More than 100,000 people in China are converted to Catholicism annually in
recent years. Although the number of priests has increased from 1,100 in the
early 1950s to more than 1,900, they are still too few to serve the country's
millions of believers, said Liu Bainian, a member of the National Committee of
the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), ahead of the top
advisory body's annual session that opens Saturday afternoon.
China now has 97 Catholic parishes, but 42 have no bishops, and 29
parishes' bishops are over the age of 85, said Liu, vice president of the
Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.
Hopefully, the opening of China's largest seminary in Beijing last
September is expected to help address the problem, he told Xinhua.
The National Seminary of the Catholic Church in China, located in Daxing
District of Beijing, invites 24 foreign and Chinese professors to give lectures
and help train priests, Liu said.
The Chinese government has offered about 74 million yuan (9.2 million U.S.
dollars) to fund the construction of the seminary.
"The development of Catholicism depends on the training of more
professionals and further improvement of their expertise," Liu said.
According to Liu, China now has more than 6,000 Catholic churches, 12
academies and nearly 70 convents.
About 95 percent of Catholic priests in China age about 30 and 200 of them
have been selected for further studies in universitiesand seminaries in the
United States, Germany, France, Austria, Italy and some other European and Asian
countries.
Liu also noted that Catholicism encourages love and tolerance for others,
which can help promote the building of a harmonious society in the country.
The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association has funded the building of
nearly 70 elementary schools, about 30 kindergartens and more than 200 medical
clinics across the country, Liu said. Enditem
