Dear brothers, dear sisters,

I am pleased to be able to address you all, participants in the Conference entitled “The universal face of the Church in China”. It is dedicated to the lives of the first Chinese Catholic bishops consecrated in modern times, who received episcopal ordination in Saint Peter’s Basilica at the hands of Pope Pius XI, one hundred years ago, on 28 October 1926.

Their consecration was an event of great significance, not only for the journey of the Catholic Church in China, but also for the universal Church, as the title of your conference suggests.

They had set sail from Shanghai to receive episcopal ordination from the Successor of Peter, and we might summarize the sentiments that inspired them on that journey with the words of Saint John of Avila: “If you send me, Lord, to do what you have done, give me your heart” (Sermon 57, 20).

In their journey, we see a metaphor of the long path travelled by the Catholic Church in China up to that day, the fruit of the great missionary zeal characteristic of the 1920s.

In 1919, in the Apostolic Letter Maximum illud, Pope Benedict XV had reiterated the clear principle that the missionary work of the Church cannot be confused with processes of colonization and the exportation of ideas or cultural models. In fact, the seed of the Gospel is brought to grow wherever it is sown, not through human strategies, but by the grace of God. And the Church, which is born of mission and the first proclamation of the Gospel, is happy to take on the characteristics and nuances of the people and nations among whom she is called to bear witness to Christ in charity.

In 1924, at the Council of Shanghai, the first General Council of the Church in China, the urgent need arose to entrust the leadership of communities and ecclesiastical circumscriptions to native Chinese priests and bishops at the earliest opportunity. The request had been championed by the missionary bishops themselves, all of whom came from other countries, under the far-sighted guidance of the Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop Celso Costantini. It was appropriate to initiate and foster that process in order to remain faithful to the very nature of the Church, whose unity is not uniformity but communion in diversity (cf. Francis, General Audience, 25 September 2013, 3).

Within the People of God, shared faith embraces differences, incorporating, wherever possible, the characteristics of individuals and peoples, with a broad outlook that mirrors God’s way of acting, for He calls each person with their own unique qualities. Thus, the Church lives among the peoples with friendship and sympathy for their hopes and noble aspirations. The Church Fathers had already borne witness to this, noting with joy that faith in Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit make brothers and sisters of people from different, and sometimes distant, cultures, languages, civilizations and nations.

In this regard, recently, referring to the great missionary Bishop Saint Toribio of Mogrovejo, I had the opportunity to emphasize that no Shepherd in the Church can claim the mission for himself alone, but receives and carries it out in communion, united with the Successor of Peter and with all the other Successors of the Apostles: the Bishops scattered throughout the world (cf. Letter to the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean on the occasion of the Third Centenary of the Canonization of Saint Toribio of Mogrovejo, 8 September 2026).

In this light, it is moving to think of our six future Bishops, who travelled from Shanghai all the way to Rome to receive their episcopal ordination at the tomb of the Apostle Peter. They crossed the globe to bear witness to the communion that springs from the faith of the Apostles, the indispensable sign of which is the unity of every single Bishop with the Bishop of Rome.

It is a beautiful sign, freely given, comforting, a liberating bond, a closeness that inspires confidence; and, above all, a manifestation of the mystery of the Mystical Body of Christ which, as Saint Paul VI wrote in the Credo of the People of God, “has no other life but that of grace”. Herein lies the uniqueness of the Church in comparison with all other social and political systems and organizations that shape and regulate societies and the coexistence of peoples.

Pope Benedict XVI, in his Letter to Chinese Catholics (27 May 2007), wrote that “the Catholic Church in China, by a particular grace of the Holy Spirit, has never been deprived of the ministry of legitimate Pastors who have preserved the apostolic succession intact” (no. 8).

His words were followed by those of Pope Francis: “Chinese Catholics, in communion with the Bishop of Rome, walk in the present time. In the context in which they live, they also bear witness to their faith with works of mercy and charity, and in their witness, they make a real contribution to the harmony of social coexistence, to the building of the common home” (Video message to participants at the international conference “100 Years since the Concilium Sinense: Between History and the Present”, 21 May 2024, 3).

Thus, as often happens in the long history of the Church, looking to the past can shed light on the present. A hundred years ago, the journey of six men, who travelled from China to Rome to become bishops of the Catholic Church, kindled joy and pride in so many of their compatriots, consigning mistrust, suspicion and hostility to oblivion. Today, in a world torn apart by conflicts and overwhelmed by wars, the Bride of Christ continues the same mission, praying that, in the face of every threat, the Lord may safeguard the treasure of ecclesial communion, a fruitful source of goodness and peace for all.

Dearest friends, I wish you every success in your work and I bless you from my heart.

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Holy See Press Office Bulletin, 5 November 2026