Exactly one year after his historic visit to Beijing in April 2023 (almost 30 years after the last one), a delegation of the Diocese of Hong Kong led by Card Stephen Chow Sau-yan made a new, important visit to Catholic communities in mainland China.
From 22 to 26 April, the Chinese cardinal – together with Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Ha Chi-shing, Vicar General Fr Peter Choy Wai-man, and a small group of priests and lay people involved in pastoral care – travelled to Guangdong province where they held meetings in the dioceses of Guangzhou and Shantou as well as the Church of Shenzhen.
This is a very significant aspect of the task of building bridges, the cardinal laid out in his ministry for the Church of Hong Kong. Guangzhou and Shenzhen are large metropolises in southern China. With Hong Kong, they constitute the huge metropolitan area of the Pearl River Delta, which are increas-ingly becoming a single commu-nity through large-scale infra-structural development under-taken by Beijing.
For Card Chow, this was his first visit to these dioceses and on his return he relayed his impre-ssions to the diocesan weekly Sunday Examiner. He said, for example, that he was struck by the large number of parishes that a priest has to serve in China, citing as an example two parish priests who serve 31 parishes in Shantou.