Vatican renews its secretive deal with China for appointing bishops

[Stone]

Vatican renews its secretive deal with China for appointing bishops
The highly secretive and controversial Sino-Vatican deal lauded by Pope Francis and Cardinal Pietro Parolin has been renewed for four years. It was launched in 2018 and has been criticized by numerous religious and political figures internationally.



Flags of Vatican and China painted on cracked wall
Racide/Getty Images

Oct 22, 2024
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Holy See has renewed its secretive deal with China, according to a spokesman for the Chinese government today.

During a regular press conference October 22, Beijing spokesman Lin Jian revealed that the Chinese government has renewed its 2018 deal with the Holy See, this time for four years instead of the previous norm of two years.

“The achievement and the implementation of the agreement have been commended from both sides,” Lin stated, referring to the 2018 deal on the appointment of bishops in China.

He added:

Through friendly consultations, the two sides have decided to extend the agreement for another four years. The two sides will maintain talks with a constructive spirit and continue to advance the improvement of China-Vatican relations.

Emblematic of the deal in recent years, it was China who announced the renewal of the deal some hours before the Vatican gave any comment.

In the customary noon press release, the Holy See stated:

In light of the consensus reached for an effective application of the Provisional Agreement regarding the Appointment of Bishops, after appropriate consultation and assessment, the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China have agreed to extend further its validity for four years from the present date.

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 officially secret deal is believed to recognize the state-approved church in China and allows the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to appoint bishops. The Pope apparently maintains veto power, although in practice it is the CCP that has control. It also allegedly allows for the removal of legitimate bishops to be replaced by CCP-approved bishops.

In a 2018 letter to Chinese Catholics, Francis described the deal as forming a “new chapter of the Catholic Church in China.” Speaking on the papal plane recently, Francis affirmed his pleasure with how the relationship is proceeding: “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.”

The Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin confirmed to this correspondent earlier this year that the Holy See aimed to renew the deal. Parolin has served as the Vatican’s secretary of state and chief diplomat since October 2013 and has been in the Holy See’s diplomatic service since 1986. Intimately involved in orchestrating the deal from the beginning, he has emerged as the foremost public defender of the deal alongside the Pope.

Speaking 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.” The deal “revolves around the basic principle of consensuality of decisions affecting bishops” and is effected by “trusting in the wisdom and goodwill of all,” said Parolin last summer.

Various Vatican sources also confided to certain members of the Vatican press corps that relations between Beijing and the Vatican have apparently “made progress” of late. This, the officials said, was largely due to the current bishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Stephen Chow, S.J., who has highlighted a spirit of “dialogue” between the two parties.

However, so marked have been Chow’s signs of appeasement to Beijing that a report warned that his Diocese of Hong Kong was actively working with the CCP to effect “sinicization” – the process of CCP state-assimilation and control.

Numerous China experts have also criticized the Vatican for the deal, and then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned in 2020 that “(t)he Vatican endangers its moral authority, should it renew the deal.” He linked to an article he penned on the subject in which he stated that “it’s clear that the Sino-Vatican agreement has not shielded Catholics from the Party’s depredations.”

The highly secretive deal has been styled by Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, as an “incredible betrayal,” with the much-loved cardinal further accusing the Vatican of “selling out” Chinese Catholics.

While Parolin has defended the deal as a necessary means of “dialogue” with the Communist authorities, the deal has led to a heightened increase in religious persecution since it was signed. The ink had barely dried on the deal in 2018 before AsiaNews, a website that regularly documents the abduction and torture of underground Catholics, reported that “(u)nderground Catholics bitterly suspect that the Vatican has abandoned them.”

Such persecution the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China described as a direct consequence of the deal. In its 2020 report, the commission wrote that the persecution witnessed is “of an intensity not seen since the Cultural Revolution.”

READ: Pope Francis said Chinese Catholics will ‘suffer’ under his deal. They are

The commission’s latest 2023 report released this May – covering the period from July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023 – highlighted a similar situation:

The Chinese Communist Party and government have continued their efforts to assert control over Catholic leadership, community life, and religious practice, installing two bishops in contravention of the 2018 Sino-Vatican agreement and accelerating the integration of the church in Hong Kong with the PRC-based, state-sponsored Catholic Patriotic Association and its Party-directed ideology.

“During the Commission’s 2023 reporting year, officials exerted pressure on both registered and unregistered Catholic communities, taking coercive action against churches and detaining members of the clergy,” the report reads.

It gave evidence of priests arrested by the Chinese authorities and subjected to “a program of political indoctrination, after which several consented to join the official church, while authorities have kept those who did not consent under surveillance and prevented them from exercising their pastoral ministry roles.”

“All bishops who refuse to join the Catholic Patriotic Association are being placed under house arrest, or disappeared, by the CCP,” China expert Steven Moser told LifeSiteNews earlier this year. “Although the Vatican said several years ago that the Sino-Vatican agreement does not require anyone to join this schismatic organization, refusal to do so results in persecution and punishment. And the Vatican stands by and does nothing.”

Only days ago, one of the two CCP bishops present at the Synod on Synodality lauded the Sino-Vatican deal on the synod floor.

Bishop Joseph Yang Yongqiang added that in China “we effectively adapt to society, serve it, adhere to the direction of the sinicization of Catholicism, and preach the Good News.”

It remains to be seen now whether the Vatican considers that the deal – renewed for four years at the start of its sixth year of existence – is still to be kept confidential, or whether in fact it has been officially approved by either party.