Report by Shirley Wang, Conference Rapporteur
In this panel session, Sr. Xiaoping Guo, Fr. Jeremiah Li, and Fr. Joseph Yu Yan presented on several local Church communities in China. Their combined messages portrayed hope for both Church leadership and laity participation. This reflection is a special dive into the lives of the Tibetan Catholic community presented by Sr. Guo.
Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (青藏高原), a beautiful and harsh landscape in West China, has enchanted many travelers, but sustains only a few inhabitants. The Tibetan Catholic community in this land endured more than a hundred years of conflicts and persecution from local Buddhist communities. It wasn’t until the 1980s that they gained more acceptance and freedom to practice their faith. However, this community still suffers from a lack of access to the sacraments. It still remains difficult for traveling priests to journey to their land regularly, and the first vocation from the community, Lu Renyi, was exhausted by the role of being the only priest, and eventually left the priesthood. Sr. Guo said the community was like “a people without a shepherd.”
However, it has been the women leaders who continue to care for the Catholic community and nurture one another spiritually. One woman even represented the Catholic Church in Chengdu’s interfaith counsel as the only woman among other male religious leaders.
In her presentation, Sr. Guo also explained how the Tibetan community forms a beautiful example of friendship in their interfaith marriages. In marriages between Catholics and Buddhists, each spouse would support the other in major religious holidays and funerals. For example, the interfaith family would observe fasts together for both religions. And when one side is hosting a funeral with prayer rituals from their religion, the other part of the family would take over all the cooking, and vice versa.
Participants came to the USCCA conference to build friendships between the Chinese and the Western Church. But how much this little Tibetan community is teaching us about friendship! They show us that in our deepest poverty and needs, we can still rise to serve one another and build a strong community. In addition, the ways in which these married couples and their families honor and support each other—despite having different religions—teaches us how we can love and build friendships with people of other faiths.
Shirley Wang recently graduated from Augustana University and is a volunteer with the US-China Catholic Association.
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