By Vatican News

Bishop Taddeo Wang Yuesheng is the new Bishop of Zhengzhou, in the Chinese province of Henan. His episcopal consecration took place on January 25, 2024.

Pope Francis made the episcopal appointment on December 16, 2023.

It was announced on Thursday in conjunction with the consecration of the new diocesan pastor, which took place within the framework of the Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China.

According to the Holy See Press Office, the new bishop was born in Zhumadian (Henan) on February 27, 1966, and studied philosophy and theology at the Central South Seminary (1987-1993).

He was ordained a priest in Hankou on October 17, 1993. He served as parish priest in Zhenghou.

Since December 2011, he has been the parish priest in the Huiji District of Zhengzhou.

Ecclesial life in Zhengzhou

The Vatican’s Fides news agency recalls that after the resumption of ecclesiastical life that began in the late 1970s, “the diocese of Zhengzhou did not have any bishops, but only Diocesan Administrators. Since the 1980s, several churches have been restored or built anew. Ecclesiastical life continued to beat, but without regaining the intensity of flourishing that seemed evident in the 1950s. At that time, out of a population of four million inhabitants, there were more than twenty thousand baptized Catholics. Today, with a population more than doubled, the number of Catholics ranges from ten thousand to twenty thousand baptized, according to estimates from various sources.”

Since the signing of the Provisional Agreement between the People’s Republic of China and the Holy See, on September 22, 2018, recalls Fides, part of the Dicastery for Evangelization, in China “there have been no more illegitimate episcopal ordinations, those celebrated without papal consent, which since the late 1950s had caused painful rifts among Chinese Catholics. Since that signing, there have been six new episcopal ordinations in China. In the same period, six so-called ‘clandestine’ bishops, appointed in the past without considering state protocols, have requested and obtained recognition of their role by the civil authorities as well. Among them is also Pietro Jin Lugang, Bishop of Nanyang, from the same Henan, who was officially recognized by the government on January 30, 2019.”