Father Angelo S. Lazzarotto, a distinguished scholar and journalist with over 400 publications to his name and many friends in China, has a passionate love for that country. A member of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) from the Veneto region of Italy, he lived and worked in Hong Kong for 16 years (1956-65 and 1979-85) and commuted regularly to the mainland. There too, he was a founding member of the Holy Spirit Study Centre in Hong Kong, the leading Catholic research centre on the Church in China.
Lazzarotto has visited China every year since he first went there in 1978, and met Deng Xiaoping, then vice-president of the country. Last September however, for the first time, the Chinese authorities blocked this 86 year-old priest and great friend of China from entering the country, when he arrived at Beijing’s international airport with a group of pilgrims from Milan. Even though he had been granted a visa two weeks earlier, they obliged him to take the next flight back home, three hours later. That experience saddened but did not discourage him.
A man who prefers to light a candle than curse the darkness, in this interview, Father Lazzarotto speaks about the deterioration in Sino-Vatican relations over the past year and the disputed question of the nomination of bishops, and suggests some steps that could be taken to improve the situation.
