Two high-ranking church officials offered differing assessments of the U.S. church’s level of commitment to Pope Francis’s signature church renewal initiative on Tuesday.

The head of the Catholic church in China began a trip to Hong Kong on Tuesday at the invitation of the city’s pope-appointed Roman Catholic cardinal, marking the first official visit by a Beijing bishop in history.

“Newman’s theology of the development of doctrine enables us to be grounded in our tradition and open to ways in which we can grow in our understanding of it,” Archbishop Costelloe tells Gerard O’Connell. “That’s a key to this whole process.”

Pope Francis has invited a community of nuns to move into the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, renewing the building’s purpose as home to cloistered women dedicated to supporting the pope’s ministry with their prayer.

Father John Beal, professor of canon law at The Catholic University of America, said that “the removal does not, of itself, entail any wrongdoing.”

A Reflection for the Memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin, by Sebastian Gomes