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from a CATHOLIC perspective

      BEIJING (CWNews.com) - Bishop Matthias Duan Yinmin was so upset by the Communist Chinese government's refusal to allow him to attend the month-long Synod on Asia at the Vatican last month that he spent several sleepless nights afterward, according to a statement read at the synod on Saturday.

      The Communist government refused permission for Bishop Duan and Bishop Joseph Xu Zhixuan to attend the synod after Pope John Paul II invited them. The bishops are officially part of the state-sanctioned Patriotic Catholic Association which denies any connection to the Catholic Church outside China, and especially the authority of the pope.

      "It pains me not to be able to take part, for political reasons, in the Bishops' Synod," Bishop Duan said in a message read by Cardinal Jan Pieter Schotte. "My heart is so gravely saddened that for two nights I was unable to sleep," the 90-year-old bishop said. But he added that he had now begun "to see things with a calmer heart." He added, "The body is absent but the heart is always present at the Bishops' Synod. Is it so necessary to go to Rome?"

      China said the bishops could not attend because the Vatican maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which China views as a renegade province, and because the Holy Father invited the bishops without consulting the Communist government first.