{"id":849320,"date":"2025-05-18T22:11:59","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T03:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/18\/china-expresses-condolences-over-death-of-pope-francis-world-news\/"},"modified":"2025-05-18T22:11:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T03:11:59","slug":"china-expresses-condolences-over-death-of-pope-francis-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/18\/china-expresses-condolences-over-death-of-pope-francis-world-news\/","title":{"rendered":"China expresses condolences over death of Pope Francis, World News"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The body of Pope Francis is placed in an open casket during the rite of the declaration of death in Santa Marta residence at the Vatican, April 21, 2025. <\/p>\n

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PHOTO: <\/p>\n

Vatican Media via Reuters<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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PUBLISHED ON<\/span>April 22, 2025 9:05 AM<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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BEIJING \u2014 China’s foreign ministry on Tuesday (April 22)\u00a0expressed condolences over the death of Pope Francis, but said it had no information to share on who might attend the funeral.<\/p>\n

China and the Vatican have in recent years maintained constructive contact and carried out beneficial exchanges, ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told a regular news briefing in Beijing.<\/p>\n

China is willing to work with the Vatican to continue to improve bilateral relations, Guo said.<\/p>\n

The two countries in October last year extended for four years a landmark 2018 agreement on the appointment of Catholic bishops in China.<\/p>\n

The renewal suggested improving ties between Beijing and the Vatican despite tension over Taiwan, the democratically-governed island China claims as its own and with which the Vatican has formal diplomatic relations.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Guo said the agreement for appointing bishops has been “implemented smoothly”.<\/p>\n

Conservative Catholics have criticised the deal, which has never been publicly released, as handing too much control to China’s ruling communist party. The Vatican says the accord resolved a decades-long split between an underground church loyal to the Vatican and the state-supervised Catholic Patriotic Association.<\/p>\n

Guo said he had no information to provide when asked about whether China would send any representatives to attend Francis’ funeral, which is scheduled for Saturday.<\/p>\n

The Vatican estimates about five\u00a0million of China’s 1.4 billion people are Catholic.<\/p>\n

Taiwan has yet to announce who it is sending to the funeral, though Taiwanese presidents have attended some major Vatican events in recent years, including Francis’ inaugural mass in 2013.<\/p>\n

Speaking in Taipei earlier on Tuesday, Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hsiao Kuang-wei said the ministry will “continue to push for senior government” participation at the funeral given the “profound” friendship between Taiwan and the Vatican.<\/p>\n

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The body of Pope Francis is placed in an open casket during the rite of the declaration of death in Santa Marta residence at the Vatican, April 21, 2025. PHOTO: Vatican Media via Reuters PUBLISHED ON April 22, 2025 9:05 AM BEIJING \u2014 China’s foreign ministry on Tuesday (April 22)\u00a0expressed condolences over the death of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":849321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1827,22714],"tags":[6052,5436],"class_list":["post-849320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-china","category-expresses","tag-china","tag-expresses"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}