Many 470 baptisms were held in the Diocese of Shanghai of the Catholic Church in China during the Holy Week 2024.
According to the Vatican agency Fides, which collects information from the Chinese Catholic newspaper Xinde, of this group a total of 349 received the sacraments of Christian initiation: that is, not only Baptism, but also Confirmation and the Eucharist.
Fides also reports that 142 baptisms were celebrated in the Beijing cathedral on Easter night; while in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, founded by the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, 100 people received Baptism; and in the Nuestra Señora del Carmen church, there were another 25 baptisms.
Fides also reports that on April 4, Bishop Francis Xavier Jin Yangke, Bishop of Ningbo in the province of Zhejiang, presided over the consecration of the new church of Wenling dedicated to Saint Francis Xavier, a Jesuit saint who evangelized India and Japan; and that he died before reaching the shores of mainland China.
At the Eucharist of consecration, attended by all the priests of the diocese, about 30 young people and adults received Confirmation.
The new church of San Francisco Javier has the shape of a cross, a neo-baroque façade, measures 39 meters long and has an area of ​​1,500 square meters.
Its construction cost almost 8 million yuan, around 1.1 million dollars, raised with donations from the faithful, an important contribution from the diocese and civil authorities.
Even though the Vatican signed an agreement with the communist government of China in 2018 for the appointment of bishops, renewed in 2020 and 2022; the persecution against the Catholic Church has continued, and in some cases, it has gotten worse.
In January of this year, Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin, Bishop of Wenzhou, was arrested after refusing to join the Patriotic Association, the organization created by the communist regime to try to control the Catholic Church in China.