In Rome last week for an audience with Pope John, frail, pale Thomas Cardinal Tien Ken-sin, 69, was halfway to a new assignment—his first since 1948. In that year, as the Chinese Reds were advancing against the Nationalists, Chinese Cardinal Tien, suffering from a heart ailment, left Peking for Shanghai and then for a long recuperation in the still peaceful British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. After China fell to the Communists, the cardinal retired to a seminary of his congregation, the missionary Society of the Divine Word, near Chicago.
No assignment came from Pope Pius XII, who was said to be...