2015/01/10 - Wishes to Cardinal Tong
Your Emminence,
On behalf of the French Catholic community of Hong Kong, I am delighted to welcome you to this beautifully restored chapel at Rosary Hill. Thank you for accepting to celebrate this mass with us at the beginning of this new year.
It also provides us with the opportunity of welcoming our French-speaking partners in Hong Kong and presenting you all with every good wishes for the new year.
2014/08/30 - Three new Bishops for Hong Kong
Having been in Hong Kong for two years now, as chaplain to the French speaking community, I would like to share with you a recent and important event for the Catholic church in China and, at the same time, present some of its more characteristic aspects.
On the last Saturday of August, three new bishops were ordained in the crowded cathedral of Our Lady of The Immaculate Conception in Hong Kong. The celebration was lead by Cardinal John Hon Tong, ordinary of the diocese, in the presence of the former bishop Joseph Zen Ze-kien, known for his position in the battle for freedom, and many other bishops who came from Rome, Taiwan, Sth Korea, Japan, USA and even from Germany – as the diocese of Essen is twinned with Hong Kong.
The last ordination took place nearly twenty years ago (1996) on the eve of the handing back of what was then a British colony. It had been British for one hundred years but then became part of the People’s Republic of China, with however special status granted across a fifty year transition period. At that time two bishops had been ordained, Zen and Hon Tong. In fact it is a sort of tradition in the Hong Kong church to have more than one episcopal ordination at a time – surely planned by the Vatican to provide the diocese with bishops for a long time.
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