Joseph Shen Bin


Joseph Shen Bin is a Chinese Catholic prelate who has served as Bishop of Shanghai since 2023 and as president of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association since 2022. He was Bishop of Haimen from 2010 to 2023.

Biography

Joseph Shen Bin was born into a Catholic family on 23 February 1970 in Qidong, in the province of Jiangsu. He studied philosophy in Sheshan, Shanghai, and in theology in Beijing, and he was ordained a priest on 1 November 1996. He worked in the diocese of Haimen as parish vicar in Sacred Heart of Jesus parish and then as vicar general of the diocese, and then as parish priest in the parish Mother of God parish.
On 17 April 2010 he was appointed to the see of Haimen, with the consent of the Holy See and the government of the People's Republic of China. He received his episcopal consecration on 21 April in the Cathedral of Cathedral of the Good Shepherd in Haimen.
In September 2017, he participated in a meeting organized by the Community of Sant'Egidio in the German dioceses of Münster and Osnabrück. On that occasional he told an interviewer about the relationship between the Church and the government of China:
On 4 April 2023, Shen was installed as the Bishop of Shanghai in the Cathedral of St. Ignatius without the approval of the Holy See. The priests of the diocese were invited to attend without being told the name of their new bishop.
Pope Francis named him bishop of Shanghai on 15 July 2023. The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin said Francis was acceding to the government's action as a pastoral gesture for the sake of the Catholics of Shanghai and despite the fact that the government's unilateral action violated the spirit of the 2018 accord between the PRC and the Holy See. He said Francis hoped the following:
Since 2022, he has been president of the College of Chinese Catholic Bishops, a government-sanctioned religious group created by the State Administration for Religious Affairs of the PRC.
His immediate predecessor in Haimen, Matthew Yu Chengcai, was not recognized by the Holy See.