Pope Bestows Sainthood on 87 Chinese, Angering Beijing

Pope John Paul II added the first Chinese to the roll of saints Sunday, declaring 120 Chinese Catholics and foreign missionaries to be martyrs in the church’s 5-century-long--and ongoing--struggle in China.

China’s state-run church bitterly protested the canonization of the 87 Chinese and 33 foreign missionaries as a “public humiliation.”

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

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

Sunday’s Vatican ceremony decreed sainthood for three others, among them Philadelphia socialite and philanthropist Katharine Drexel, who died in 1955.

The pope also sought Sunday to repair damage to relations with other religions caused by a recent Vatican document that reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church. The pope said that it had been misinterpreted and that the church’s position was not “arrogance” with regard to other faiths.