VATICAN CITY, APRIL 10, 2011 (Zenit.org).- The commission that Benedict XVI established in 2007 to study the major issues regarding the Church in China will meet this week in the Vatican.
The Vatican press office announced Saturday that the commission will hold a three-day meeting, beginning Monday.
The communiqué explained that the commission is constituted by «the heads of the dicasteries of the Roman Curia with competence in this area and by representatives of the Chinese episcopate and religious congregations.»
This will be the commission’s fourth meeting. The first was convened March 10-12, 2008 and had the Pope’s May 27, 2007 Letter to Chinese Catholics as its theme.
The two subsequent gatherings — held March 30-April 1, 2009 and March 22-24, 2010 — examined «the topic of human, intellectual, spiritual and pastoral formation of seminarians and consecrated persons and the permanent formation of priests,» the Vatican note added.
It reported that this week’s plenary session «will consider the pastoral situation of the ecclesiastical administrations in China, with particular reference to the challenges that the Church meets in incarnating the Gospel in the present social and cultural conditions.»