Taizé Community to Print 1 Million Bibles in Chinese

The Taizé community will assume the printing costs, which they have named "operation hope."

BRUSSELS (Zenit) - The Taizé community will print and distribute 1 million Catholic Bibles in China during 2009, announced the community's prior.

Brother Alois Loser revealed the plan to help the Christians in China at the conclusion of the closing of the community's 31st European meeting for youth, held from Dec. 28 to Jan. 1 in Brussels.

The community will print 200,000 complete Bibles, and 800,000 New Testaments with the Psalms. The community will use the Studium Biblicum translation of the Bible, a Catholic version that was completed by the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Hong Kong in 1968.

The texts will be printed in Nanjing, China, and from there distributed in phases throughout the country.

"The word of God unites us more than division," said Brother Alois. "And tonight we are happy to offer a concrete sign of this unity, in particular with the Christians of China."

The Taizé community will assume the printing costs, which they have named "operation hope."

This isn't the first time that Taizé has assumed the cost of printing and distributing Bibles. At the end of the Second Vatican Council, the community responded to a petition of the bishops of Latin America and printed 1 million Bibles in Spanish and 500,000 in Portuguese.

In 1989, the community also printed 1 million New Testaments in Russian for the Russian Orthodox Church.