The bishop in China who was arrested by the government has been released. Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin was arrested on 25 October. He heads the Yongjia (Wenzhou) Diocese in Zhejiang province in eastern China. In addition to arresting Bishop Shao, the authorities also blocked entry to the Catholic cemetery in Wenzhou to prevent Christians from praying.
Bishop Shao, a Vatican-approved bishop who was ordained by papal mandate in 2011, has a record of arrests, having been arrested six times already prior to his arrest on October 25. The arrests are primarily due to Shao’s unwillingness to cooperate with state-sanctioned Catholic bodies such as the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China (BCCCC) and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA).
It is commonplace in China for Catholic leaders who fail to cooperate with the government to be arrested and detained. Besides Bishop Zhao, there is also the case of Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu of Xinxiang in Henan province, who was arrested in May along with many priests and seminarians, and whose whereabouts remain unknown.