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Text of report by Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post website on 24 March
[Report by Ambrose Leung at the Vatican: "Vatican Meeting Fails To Iron Out China Issues"; headline as provided by source]
Vatican officials have been grappling with the highly contentious issue of the Catholic Church's relationship with Beijing at a closed-door conference on mainland policy this week.
But as the annual plenary session of the papal commission on China affairs draws to a close today after three days of intensive debate, solutions to multilayered questions -including how to "normalise" the Catholic faith under the mainland's state control of church affairs -remain unlikely to emerge.
"I am not too optimistic on any major breakthrough in the Holy See's China policy," said one participant at the meeting, which counts bishops from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and international experts as members, in addition to top...