According to Vatican-China analyst Riccardo Cascioli, the recent four-year extension of the secret agreement between the Holy See and Beijing on the appointment of bishops risks increased persecution against Chinese Catholics.
Despite the Vatican’s efforts to maintain dialogue with China, the agreement, first signed in 2018, has been widely criticized for its lack of results, with critics arguing that the Holy See’s concessions are undermining the Catholic Church’s mission in China.
In an analysis published in the Daily Compass, Cascioli noted that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, has continuously claimed it is important for Rome to collaborate with China’s atheistic Communist regime by allowing it to nominate Catholic bishops in China.
Highlighting the vagueness of the Cardinal’s statements on the matter, Cascioli pointed out that Cardinal Parolin said in May that he hoped “the agreement would be improved in some points,” without specifying what those points were.
“To say that there are some points to be improved, however, is an understatement,” Cascioli said, “because if the Holy See’s goal is the unity of the Chinese Church and its freedom, it must be acknowledged that six years of secret agreements have moved the goal away rather than closer to it.”
The Vatican initially sought a shorter two-year renewal of the agreement, but Beijing pushed for a four-year extension, which it ultimately secured. Cascioli argued that it is now evident China has consistently dictated the terms of the agreement, while the Vatican appears to be “begging for some recognition” while maintaining its commitment to “dialogue,” despite mounting evidence that the Chinese government has little intention of loosening its control over religious practice.
Critiquing the agreement’s limited success in addressing the appointment of bishops, in his analysis for the Daily Compass, Cascioli pointed out that in the past six years, only nine bishops have been appointed, while more than 30 dioceses remain without leadership.
Cascioli noted that on multiple occasions, Beijing has appointed bishops without consulting the Vatican and reorganized dioceses without Vatican involvement. The Vatican only accepted these decisions after the fact, further demonstrating the control exercised by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its disregard for the Holy See.
An even more troubling aspect of the agreement, Cascioli argued, is the Vatican’s de facto recognition of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), a government-controlled body that requires clergy to pledge “independence” from the Holy See. This “has had the obvious side effect of increasing the persecution of those who refuse to submit to the party,” Cascioli declared, highlighting the plight of those who remain in the underground Catholic Church outlawed by the CCP.
Cascioli noted that the recent report by the Hudson Institute, Ten Persecuted Catholic Bishops in China, written by religious freedom advocate Nina Shea, details the ongoing persecution of bishops in the underground Church.
As CatholicVote has noted, the report sheds light on the detention, harassment, and forced disappearances of bishops who resist the CPCA. Shea’s report confirms that the cases of these 10 bishops represent just “the tip of the iceberg” of the persecution millions of Chinese Catholics face under the agreement.
>> RELIGIOUS FREEDOM EXPERT: DON’T FORGET THE CATHOLIC BISHOPS PERSECUTED BY CHINA <<
Among the bishops detailed in Shea’s report is Baoding’s Bishop James Su Zhimin, who has been in secret detention for 27 years after leading a Marian procession. His fate remains unknown. Wenzhou’s Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin, another example, has been repeatedly detained without due process since 2018, with his most recent arrest occurring in January 2023.
The persecution documented in the report, Cascioli argued, confirms that the Vatican-China agreement has done little to protect those Catholics who refuse to comply with Communist directives.
Cascioli noted that the situation is similarly bleak in Hong Kong, where Catholics face increasing repression under the new National Security Law. Prominent figures like publisher Jimmy Lai have been arrested, while the Vatican remains largely silent on the crackdown. According to Cascioli, the Holy See’s reluctance to speak out against the repression of Hong Kong’s Catholics is part of its broader strategy to maintain diplomatic ties with Beijing, despite the human cost.
Cascioli also highlighted the CCP’s promotion of “sinicization,” the euphemism for the imposition of Chinese Communist ideology on religious practices in the name of inculturation. Calling it “a terrible mystification,” Cascioli argued its true aim “is nothing other than the submission of the Church to the directives of the Communist Party,” as laid out in the CCP’s Five Year Plan for the Sinicization of Catholicism in China (2023-2027), which has fallen under heavy criticism from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The extension of the agreement, Cascioli argued, is unlikely to change the situation for Chinese Catholics in the next four years, making it “a very high price paid by the Holy See to keep alive a semblance of dialogue with China.”