U.S. bishop calls for investigation of attacks on Chinese nuns

Published: 2005-12-07

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The chairman of the U.S. bishops' international policy committee called for a thorough investigation and sanctions against those responsible for the attacks on Catholic nuns in China. In a letter to the Chinese ambassador to the United States, Bishop Thomas G. Wenski of Orlando, Fla., said the government has implicitly acknowledged its involvement in the attacks, which severely injured at least 16 nuns from the Congregation of the Franciscan Sacred Heart Missionaries in Xi'an. The nuns were attacked by some 40 men while protecting church grounds that had been the subject of an ongoing legal dispute between local government authorities and church officials. "Government offers to pay for part of the hospital expenses incurred is implicit acknowledgment of official involvement in the attack and is a thoroughly inadequate response," Bishop Wenski wrote in the letter, dated Dec. 5.

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