Chinese Archbishop Lin, head of divided archdiocese, dead at 88 (AsiaNews)

Archbishop Peter Lin Jiashan of Fuzhou, China, has died at the age of 88, after a long illness.

A leader of the “underground” Church, who had been imprisoned in labor camps during the 1980s, Archbishop Lin was chosen by the Holy See in 2016 to head the Fuzhou archdiocese. However it was only in 2020, after the Vatican reached a secret accord with Beijing, that the government recognized his episcopal authority.

A large number of priests in the Fuzhou archdiocese have refused to accept civil registration and remain “underground,” so that Archbishop Lin presided over a divided clergy.