Vitus Chang

Vitus Chang Tso-huan SVD ( Chinese  張作恆 , Pinyin Zhāng Zuòhéng ; born August 22, 1903 in Tsingtau ; † November 1, 1982 ) was a Chinese bishop of the Roman Catholic Church .

Life

Chang, the son of a Chinese converted to Christianity, was born on August 22, 1903 in Tsingtau, the capital of the Kiautschou area in the south of the Shandong Peninsula on the east coast of China , which was then leased from the Chinese Empire to the German Empire .

Vitus Chang joined the action in his home region Divine Word Missionaries in and received on 16 March 1930, the sacrament of Holy Orders . On July 8, 1941, Pope Pius XII appointed him . the Apostolic Vicar of Sinyangchow in central China, and it rose to titular bishop of Eguga . The episcopal ordination donated him on December 8 of that year, Bishop Theodor Schu SVD († 1965), co-consecrators were the apostolic vicar of Tsaochowfu , Franz Hoowaarts SVD, and the apostolic vicar of Ichow , Karl Christian Weber SVD. In 1942 he was co- consecrator of Sylvester Philip Wang († 1949 as Bishop of Fengxiang ). On April 11, 1946, the vicariate was converted into an ordinary diocese and Vitus Chang became the first diocesan bishop of Sinyang ( Xinyang ). Under the pressure of the communist regime, he could no longer exercise his office and resigned on November 13, 1949. The bishop emeritus was assigned the titular bishopric of Cyanae . As such, he took part in all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965 .

In exile he initially worked in Hong Kong and the Philippines and from 1958 in Germany. There he worked as a student pastor , from 1968 also as a pastor in Bornheim- Dersdorf and as auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Cologne and for various orders ( Steyler missionaries , Redemptorists ), d. In other words , he carried out confirmations and church consecrations , including those of the Neviges pilgrimage cathedral , as well as deacon and priest ordinations in the St. Augustin Mission House , Geistingen Monastery and St. Lambert Study House (1971).

In 1972 he retired to Bad Godesberg - Rüngsdorf , honored with a commemorative publication .

The liturgical reform was Bishop Chang reservations about. Towards the end of his life he was in temporary contact with the collection of faithful Catholics (Basel) and several times celebrated the so-called Tridentine Mass for ancient ritualistic groups of Catholic lay people. Günther Storck († 1993 as irregularly ordained bishop in 1984), at that time formally incardinated in the mainland Chinese (quasi) diocese of the exiled Roman Catholic bishop Blasius Kurz , asked Chang in 1980/81 in vain to become auxiliary bishop for the newly established sedevacantist seminary Heilig Blut to be made available in Munich . Chang, however, never ordained deacons or priests for this seminar and withdrew from those circles under the influence of Elisabeth Gerstner († 2005) and Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing .

Bishop Chang was buried in the canon cemetery behind Cologne Cathedral .

literature

• Hermann Köster (Ed.): Sinica Festschrift for the 70th birthday of Bishop Vitus Chang. SVD, Munich 1972.

Web links

• Entry on Vito Chang Tso-huan on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on August 16, 2016.

Individual evidence

1. ^ A file with retreats for Chinese students in Europe from 1964 is preserved in the Lucerne State Archives : query-staatsarchiv.lu.ch