Article originally published on https://ewtn.it/2025/05/23/cina-chiesa-sfida-papa-leone-xiv/
The pilgrimage to the Shrine of Sheshan, near Shanghai, marks May 24, the feast of Mary Help of Christians , patroness of China. But May 24 has also been, since 2007, a day of prayer for Catholics in China, established by Benedict XVI after his intense letter to the Catholics of China, which has not yet been fully implemented. The anniversary and the recurrence are celebrated in China with slightly increased restrictions on Catholics , while the vacant see was celebrated by the Beijing government with the unilateral appointment of two auxiliary bishops, one even in the diocese of Shanghai, where an auxiliary bishop exists but has been under house arrest since 2012.
It is the sign of a difficult situation, and an even more difficult balance, which makes China a missionary territory to be managed creatively. While Cardinal Chow, bishop of Hong Kong, stated that Leo XIV visited China several times, a study published at the time of the Conclave on the Chinese Catholic website Xinde traced the history of the word “Pope” in Mandarin. And the meaning of that translation work is also at the heart of the Chinese government’s misunderstanding of the figure of the Pope.
But let’s proceed in order. In the seventeenth century, Western missionaries—especially Jesuits—who had had contact with the refined court of Beijing and the upper classes of Chinese society helped spread great admiration for that country and its civilization in Europe . Then came colonization. At the end of the eighteenth century, Great Britain introduced a different image of China to Europe: a backward, corrupt country, governed by unreliable people . English claims found easy play in a China experiencing a phase of great decadence, which began in the nineteenth century and would lead to the fall of the Qing dynasty and the proclamation of the Republic in 1911.
These are processes from which the Churches are not immune. While penetrating China was previously difficult for missionaries, requiring a great deal of mediation between cultures , the Opium Wars, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, marked a period of greater freedom of action for foreign clerics, and they flocked there in droves, both Catholics and Protestants.
A freedom of action that was part of a renewed missionary thrust of the entire Church, which reached its peak under Leo XIII . Thousands of European missionaries moved to China. They came into contact not with the upper classes, but with men and women who had never left their villages and had never even met Chinese from other regions. But they were also missionaries who did not know the language, acted on the basis of inadequate evaluations of local religious traditions, and did not even understand the structure of Chinese society. The gap with the missionaries led by Father Matteo Ricci was evident. And in China, where Father Matteo Ricci was even venerated, they felt this difference almost painfully. Also because the new missionaries were unable to familiarize themselves even with the Chinese faithful or priests and foreign religious. Contrary to Hadrian VII’s request, they reluctantly entrusted pastoral and administrative responsibilities to the natives. They believed that the Chinese identity was so strong that it hindered evangelization.
And what happened from the Chinese point of view? The yang guizi , the foreign devils—as the Chinese call those who come from outside—assumed for the first time the aggressive and threatening character of the colonizers. The missionaries had arrived with the colonizing powers, and were protected by France. It was easy for the inhabitants of Zhongguo , the country in the middle, or the center of the world (as the Chinese call China), to identify them with the representatives of Western interests.
Added to all this were cultural difficulties. Father Joseph Gabet, a Vincentian missionary in China, wrote to Pope Pius IX in 1847: ” The Chinese commonly believe that the God of the Christians is a European monarch and that foreign missionaries are sent to procure new subjects for him .” This was a common belief in China, where the emperor, the son of heaven, was the highest political and religious authority, and the distinction between temporal and spiritual power was completely incomprehensible.
A difficulty that persists even today, and which is evident in the problems encountered in translating some Catholic terms into Chinese. Pope, for example, in Chinese is translated as jiaohuang or jiaozong . That is, literally: emperor of religion, head of religious affairs. Holy See is translated as jiao ting , where jiao means religion and ting. and the character used to indicate the imperial court. These are terms that evoke a political dimension and are inherently ambiguous. Thus, for the Chinese, the appointment of bishops is not a matter of religious freedom. Rather, it concerns the fact that a foreign head of state appoints his representatives on Chinese soil. If we then add the fact that the Chinese are a strongly materialistic people (and not only because of sixty years of Marxism, but also because Confucianism and Buddhism, the two most widespread faiths, lack a true doctrine of the afterlife), we understand the root of the Catholic Church’s difficulties in China.
But where do these translations come from? The term Jiaohuang , meaning Pope , was first introduced by the great missionary Giulio Aleni in his geographical treatise Chronicles of Foreign Countries (Zhifang Waiji), published in 1623.
The term Jiaohuang is composed of the characters Jiao (doctrine) and Huang (emperor). Before then, other translations of the word “pope” had been proposed, some borrowed from Buddhist terminology, such as “Great Monk” (Da Seng) or “Dharma King” (Fa Wang).
Arriving at the Ming court in 1583, the well-known Jesuit Matteo Ricci instead opted for the expression Jiaohua Wang (literally “king of doctrine”), emphasizing the Pope’s role as spiritual leader and aligning it with the Confucian idea of “educating the world.” Ricci’s choice clearly showed his intention to avoid using the term Huang, which at the time was reserved exclusively for the emperor, preferring instead the title Wang, meaning “king” or “sovereign,” typically used to refer to the leaders of vassal states.
By adapting to the culture and customs of his host country, the missionary from Macerata sought to avoid potential conflicts with the central authorities and to support the work of evangelization . Ricci’s translation first appeared in his Complete Map of the Ten Thousand Countries of the World ( Kunyu Wanguo Quantu ), in which he states: “The king (Jiaohua Wang) of this place does not marry and practices the Catholic religion.”
From this time on, the expression Jiaohua Wang spread, appearing in most subsequent Catholic documents and Chinese-language prayer books , such as the Holy Hours . ( Sheng jiao ri ke ), which remained in circulation until the founding of the Republic of China (1912-1949).
himself preferred this expression in his 1642 work Classic in four characters of the sacred religion of the Lord of Heaven ( Tianzhu shengjiao sizi jingwen ), which can be translated as “Four-character Scripture of the Sacred Religion of the Lord of Heaven”.
translation remained popular even during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), a period marked by deep divisions between the Catholic Church and the Middle Kingdom. It was the Kangxi Emperor (reigned 1661–1722) in particular who insisted that the title Huang be reserved only for the ” Son of Heaven” and to no other monarch, including the Pope.
It was only with the end of the Opium Wars and the subsequent decline of the Qing dynasty that the word Huang ceased to be the exclusive purview of the emperor. The term Jiaohuang , proposed in 1623, could thus be reused to designate the Vicar of Christ, gradually becoming accepted in Chinese society up to the present day.
More recently, however, Catholics and academic communities in China have begun to question the relevance of this term, now considered obsolete, and have proposed replacing it with Jiaozong . Composed of the characters Jiao (doctrine) and Zong (great teacher), the latter expression emphasizes the pope’s spiritual rather than secular role, in accordance with the principles of the Lateran Pacts.
According to the Catholic magazine Xinde, the term Jiaozong was therefore particularly appropriate in reference to the late Pope Francis, given his humility and simplicity, and the title Huang was deemed inappropriate.
Despite efforts by academic circles and media close to the State Administration for Religious Affairs to promote the use of the term Jiaozong , it has not yet completely replaced the expression Jiaohuang. And contrary to Xinde’s hopes, even the election of the new Pope Leo XIV has not reversed this trend, as many Chinese news sites continue to prefer the old translation.