Bishop Vincent Guo Xijin has officially handed over control of the Mindong diocese to Bishop Vincent Zhan Silu, with a Vatican spokesman, Msgr. Claudio Celli, witnessing the event. Bishop Guo Xijin has never been recognized by Beijing; Bishop Zhan Silu was appointed by the government without Vatican authorization—thus incurring the penalty of excommunication. Pope Francis lifted that penalty as part of a recent agreement with the Chinese regime.

Msgr. Celli announced that another “underground” bishop, Bishop Peter Zhuang Jianjian of Shantou, will surrender his place to a government-appointed prelate, Bishop Giuseppe Huang Bingzhang, in a similar transfer of authority.

Leaders of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church will meet in Kiev on Saturday, December 15, in a “unification council” proposed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, to plan the future of a self-governing Church. The Moscow patriarchate has declared the meeting illicit, and it is not clear whether any of the bishops affiliated with Moscow will participate. The Orthodox prelates in attendance will choose a patriarch, to be confirmed by Constantinople as leader of the (theoretically) unified Orthodox churches in Ukraine. The meeting will be held at St. Sophia cathedral—a building that was seized by the Soviet regime and is still owned by the government, but has been proposed as a cathedral for the new patriarch.

The 24th UN Climate Change Conference (COP24) began on December 2 in Katowice, Poland. As the conference began to draw to a close, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said a failure to act “would not only be immoral, it would be suicidal,” and the coordinator of the Holy See’s delegation issued his own appeal at a press conference.