Vatican Renews Secret Deal with China

Pope Francis sees Communist China as 'a promise and a hope for the Church'

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The Vatican has renewed its controversial secret deal with the Communist Party of China (CCP) for the third time, despite continuing state-sponsored persecution against Christians and the forced Sinicization of the Catholic Church.

The Holy See Press Office issued a communique Tuesday, announcing that China and the Vatican had agreed to "extend further its validity for four years" after reaching a "consensus" on the "effective application of the Provisional Agreement regarding the appointment of bishops."

"The Vatican Party remains dedicated to furthering the respectful and constructive dialogue with the Chinese Party, in view of the further development of bilateral relations for the benefit of the Catholic Church in China and the Chinese people as a whole," the statement noted.

The communique was issued in Italian, English and Chinese, with the unusual use of the word "Party" to describe the Vatican in all three languages.

Vatican News boasted that the Provisional Agreement had successfully "ended decades of episcopal ordinations without papal consent, leading to a radically changed scenario in the last six years."

"Since then, about ten bishops have been appointed and consecrated, and Beijing officially recognized the public role of several previously unrecognized bishops," it added.

The Italian Episcopal Conference daily, Avvenire, also joined in trumpeting the deal's success, claiming that "no more illegitimate episcopal ordinations have occurred in China, those ordained without papal consent, which since the end of the 1950s had wounded ecclesial communion and caused lacerations among Chinese Catholics."

Catholic human rights campaigner Benedict Rogers, who has been an outspoken critic of the concordat, slammed the Vatican's decision, noting that the agreement had "Yet again [been] renewed with no review, no transparency, no scrutiny, no explanation."

Rogers, who is co-founder of Hong Kong Watch, wrote on Twitter: "It's a dodgy, dangerous deal and it should at least be opened up for debate and review."

On Thursday, the Hudson Institute published a scathing report on the concordat, stressing that "religious repression of the Catholic Church in China has intensified since the 2018 China-Vatican agreement on the appointment of bishops."

The CCP has subjected 10 bishops to indefinite detention without due process, disappearances, open-ended security police investigations, banishments from their dioceses, or other impediments to their episcopal ministries including threats, surveillance, interrogation, and so-called reeducation, the report stated.

The CCP targeted the 10 bishops after they opposed the state-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), which requires its members to pledge independence from the Holy See, Nina Shea, Director of Center for Religious Freedom, explained.

In his 2007 letter to Catholics in China Pope Benedict XVI declared that the association was "incompatible" with Catholic doctrine.

According to Andrew Tsien, former bishop of Hualian, Taiwan, the objectives of the CCPA are "to substitute it for the true Roman Catholic church" in the short term and "to eliminate religion in order to achieve a pure materialistic and autocratic society" in the long term. 

Seven of the 10 bishops have been detained without due process, with some of them having been under continuous detention for years or decades, while others have been detained repeatedly, up to six times, since the agreement's signing, Shea noted.

The Hudson Institute report argued that the Vatican had endorsed the deal because the Holy See is anxious to fill over 30 bishoprics, about a third of China's Catholic dioceses, that the officially atheistic CCP has kept vacant.

"In over 30 years of dialogue with China, the Vatican has kept silent or publicly downplayed China's denials of religious freedom," Shea wrote. "This resembles the Holy See's no-criticism policy of Ostpolitik toward Eastern European Communism."

Speaking on the papal plane en route from Singapore to Rome in September, Pope Francis affirmed the Holy See's relationship with the Communist dictatorship, stating: "Yes, I'm pleased with the dialogues with China. The results are good. Even for the appointment of bishops, things are progressing with good will."

"I've spoken with the Secretariat of State, and I'm happy with how things are going. As for China, I see China as an 'ilusión' [aspiration], meaning I would like to visit China. It's a great country, and I admire and respect China," the pontiff added.

Despite offering to visit China on numerous occasions, Francis' requests have never elicited an invitation from Beijing to host the pontiff on an apostolic journey.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state who brokered the deal, said that it "revolves around the basic principle of consensuality of decisions affecting bishops." In July 2023, Parolin defended the secretive nature of the deal, stating that "the text is confidential because it has not yet been finally approved."

In April 2023, the CCP reneged on the deal, unilaterally appointing Bp. Joseph Shen Bin to the See of Shanghai in violation of the concordat.

In his installation ceremony, Bp. Shen Bin did not mention Pope Francis. Instead, he promised to press ahead with the Sinicization of Catholicism and continue the tradition of "patriotism and love" for the church in Shanghai.

The sudden move to unilaterally install Shen Bin, who is currently bishop of Haimen, shocked the Vatican, which admitted on its official news website that it had learned of the appointment from media reports. 

When the Vatican renewed the deal for the second time in October 2022, Rogers commented on how Pope Francis had remained silent in the face of gross human rights abuses by the CCP.

"He has not uttered a public prayer (I hope he has at least said a private one) for the Uighurs, Hong Kongers, Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, and others who are increasingly feeling the pressure of the Chinese Communist Party's boot – at all." 

"Two years ago, the Vatican made a deal with Beijing that bought the pope's silence," Rogers lamented. "In China today, we see one of the 21st century's worst crimes – perhaps a genocide – being perpetrated against the Uighurs. … We also see the worst crackdown on Christians since the Cultural Revolution, while the repression in Tibet continues." 

The Sino-Vatican agreement, signed for the first time on Sept. 22, 2018, was extended in October 2020 and October 2022.

Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.

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