Pope names church’s first Chinese-born saints, angers China

But John Paul, looking wan and tired on a rainy morning in St Peter’s Square, insisted “the celebration is not the time to make judgments”.

“The church only intends to recognise that those martyrs are an example of courage and coherence for all of us, and give honour to the noble Chinese people,” John Paul said.

The canonisation falls on China’s National Day celebrating the 51st anniversary of Communist rule in China. The timing especially angered Beijing, which is combatting underground Catholic churches and other banned spiritual movements it sees as a challenge to its authority.

Most of the 120 martyrs named today died in the anti-Western, anti-Christian Boxer Rebellion of 100 years ago.

China today still views the Boxer Rebellion as heroic resistance to imperial forces – and the slain missionaries and Chinese Catholics as servants of the imperialists.

A yellow banner draped from St Peter’s Basilica proclaimed them “sacred martyrs”.

“We express our indignation at this distortion of history,” Bishop Fu Tieshan of China’s state-run church said in an interview shown today on China Central Television’s overseas service.

Ethnic Chinese Catholics assembled from around the world for the ceremony, joining a damp throng of thousands of other clerics, nuns and scarfed pilgrims under umbrellas.

“This should be a subject of glory and pride for the whole Chinese people,” said the Rev Anthony Chen, a China-born priest retired from the Chicago diocese. “It’s an honor, to me.”

Chen said he hoped the canonisation would be an occasion for reflection that would draw both sides in the China-Vatican split closer together. But for China, it appeared only to widen the rift.

China broke ties with the Vatican in 1951 and forbids worship outside the state-run church.