The Vatican is the only diplomatic service of note to keep
its own representation in Taipei. And when one seeks in the past the reasons
for this anomaly, Rome and Beijing recount two different stories. It was the recently
installed Communist regime that bluntly broke off diplomatic relations with the
Vatican, when in September of 1951 it expelled the nuncio Antonio Riberi. But
the fact that only three years afterwards the same Riberi had transferred the
nunciature to the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, who had fled to
Formosa after having lost the civil war to the Communists, was always presented
by the Chinese regime as proof of radical Vatican hostility towards the new
Communist China.
There is a preceding historical controversy that, set
alongside the Taiwan episode, seems made to measure to confirm the Chinese
political-diplomatic complaint. It is the Manchukuo affair, the puppet State
that Japanese military occupation created in the 30’s in the north-eastern
regions of China. In that situation also, according to official Chinese
historiography, papal diplomacy hastened to give its support to the
illegitimate State entity created by the Japanese aggressors at the expense of
China. One of the most thorough governmental documents on the religious
question, the “white book” on religion drawn up by the Chinese Council of State
in October 1997, also recalls that after
Japan invaded north-east China, the Vatican adopted a position that supported
Japanese aggression. It was the first to
recognize the puppet regime of Manchukuo, set up by Japan, and sent a
representative there.
In fact, the photo of the Vatican representative as guest at
the official receptions of the Manchukuo government were used for decades by
Chinese anti-imperialist propaganda. But did it happen exactly like that?
While the clash with Mao’s Communists degenerated into a
bloody conflict, in September 1931 the Japanese deliberately provoked an attack
on their own railway line that crossed southern Manchuria so as to justify in
the name of the the occupation of the
rich north-eastern Chinese province, as a base for further territorial
expansion into the former Celestial Empire. In March 1932 the Japanese
themselves, created the puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria, placing at its
head Puyi himself, the dethroned emperor (a figure made famous by Bernardo
Bertolucci’s movie The Last Emperor).
In the Vatican the most pressing need appeared to be that of
protecting as far as possible the ordinary life of the Catholic missions –
eight, including vicariates and apostolic prefectures, plus the two provinces
of Jehol and Hingan – now under the control of the new “empire”. With a letter
dated 20 March 1934 the Congregation of Propaganda Fide appointed the apostolic
vicar of Kirin Auguste Ernest Pierre
Gaspais as representative ad tempus of the Holy See and of the Catholic
missions of Manchukuo to the government of Manchukuo.
Maoist propaganda also would read in
the new duties given to the vicar of Kirin full Vatican recognition of the
puppet government. But did it really happen like that?
Continue: Part 2
Refrences:
by Gianni Valente
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