Taiwan has shown how society can benefit when ethnic and religious diversities are acknowledged and human rights are upheld
On July 18 last year, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen attended the installation ceremony of Archbishop Thomas Chung An-zu of Taipei in the nation’s capital.
Besides greeting and posing for photographs with the new archbishop, President Tsai delivered a speech where she hailed the Church’s century-long presence as having been vital for the development of Taiwan.
"Over the past few decades, the Church has helped Taiwan society in so many ways and at so many levels that it is impossible to describe them in a few words or a few days," Tsai said.
The gesture of amity and solidarity from the outspoken leader had political connotations, most likely aimed at communist China some 160 kilometers away, where Christians and other religious minorities are persecuted in a strikingly contrasting sociopolitical scenario.
The nation’s first female president has recently enraged Chinese authorities by supporting the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and by offering a haven to victims of the former British colony’s draconian national security law.
Taiwan is a sovereign, democratic nation even though it has never officially declared independence, but China still considers Taiwan as one of its provinces and has threatened to annex it militarily. It does not have sovereign status at the United Nations, at the behest of China, yet it has diplomatic relations with 14 countries and maintains unofficial and economic relations with some 47 states. The Vatican is the only European state to have diplomatic ties with Taiwan while the United States is its strongest ally.
Taiwan has expressed disquiet over a secretive Vatican-China deal signed in 2018 over bishop appointments, and it has warned the Holy See against cozying up to a communist regime that violates religious and human rights.
In the Republic of China, as Taiwan is officially known, Christianity has become very much part of national life in a country that embraces diversity of faiths and ethnicities for the common good and integrated development.
About 4 percent of Taiwan’s nearly 24 million-strong population are Christians, while Buddhists make up about 35 percent, Taoists 33 percent and non-religious about 19 percent.
Catholic missionaries first arrived in Taiwan in 1626 when six Dominican priests led by Father Bartolome Martinez joined a Spanish expedition team. The island, then called Formosa, was under the Dutch East India Company and was inhabited mostly by Taiwanese aboriginals.
by Rock Ronald (UCA News)
https://www.ucanews.com/news/catholicism-and-taiwan-a-model-of-growing-together/91436
The five-tiered pagoda at Tian-Yuan temple is seem behind a blossoming tree in New Taipei City on Feb. 9 ahead of the lunar new year ushering in the Year of the Ox. (Photo: Sam Yeh/AFP)
