In September 1992, the CPCA-sponsored Conference of Chinese Catholic Representatives, in which the bishops were a minority, approved new statutes of the Bishops' College, which seemed to subject the college to the Conference and to reiterate the CPCA rules for the election of bishops and the replacement, in the rite of episcopal ordination, of the papal mandate with the consent of the college. Probably because of this, the September 1993 directives also exhorted the bishops to defend with greater courage "the rights of the Church and communion with the Roman Pontiff." And, in fact, the bishops claimed more strongly at the next Assembly of the Catholic Representatives, held in January 1998, leadership in church matters.