CV NEWS FEED // Human rights watchdog Benedict Rogers has strongly criticized the Vatican’s secret agreement with China on appointing Catholic bishops, renewed this month for another four years.
This third renewal, initially signed in 2018 and extended twice since, has been met with increasing skepticism due to a lack of transparency, oversight, and apparent benefit for Chinese Catholics.
In an article for Union of Catholic Asian (UCA) News, Rogers, who co-founded Hong Kong Watch, called the renewal “a deal with the devil” in Beijing, especially as reports of China’s human rights abuses continue to escalate globally. He outlined several major problems with the Vatican-China agreement.
First, Rogers noted, the deal’s details remain secret despite its repeated renewals. “If it is such a good deal that it is worth renewing, isn’t it also worth making public?” Rogers asked, questioning what either party had to hide.
The second issue Rogers raised was the fact that the Vatican has granted the “avowedly atheistic and repressive” Chinese Communist Party (CCP) significant control over the appointment of bishops in China.
Many loyal bishops who have remained underground and faithful to Rome have been asked to step aside in favor of state-appointed candidates, a move Rogers called “a betrayal of loyal Catholics who have risked their lives for decades to remain faithful.” Rather than uniting the underground and state-approved congregations, the agreement has led to further division and persecution of Chinese Catholics, he argued in the UCA News article.
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A third issue, according to Rogers, is the apparent silence of Pope Francis on China’s human rights abuses. Although the Pope regularly addresses global injustices, he has remained silent on several critical issues in China, Rogers remarked.
Rogers noted that despite escalating persecution of Christians, atrocities in Tibet, suppression in Hong Kong, threats to Taiwan, and the genocide of Uyghur Muslims, the Vatican has barely spoken out. Even concerning high-profile Catholics like Hong Kong’s imprisoned Catholic businessman Jimmy Lai or 92-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, who faces threats to his freedom, the Vatican has issued only sparse comments.
Rogers also warned that China’s government cannot be trusted to honor agreements, especially with its history of broken promises. Citing the Chinese regime’s disregard for the Sino-British Joint Declaration in Hong Kong, he argued that “no agreement with Beijing’s brutal regime is worth the paper it is written on.”
Over the past six years, China has consistently violated the Sino-Vatican agreement, so renewing it without addressing these breaches risks worsening the plight of Chinese Catholics, Rogers said.
He also noted that the Hudson Institute report Ten Persecuted Catholic Bishops in China, which religious freedom expert Nina Shea authored, highlights the cases of Vatican-approved Chinese bishops whose persecution “has continued or worsened” since 2018.
The report reveals a dismal picture of life for many Catholic leaders in China. Ten bishops have faced “indefinite detention without due process, disappearances, open-ended security police investigations, banishments, or other impediments to their episcopal ministries,” it said. Seven bishops are under continuous detention, some for decades.
The report, which is the first public document to compile cases of high-level Church persecution in China, highlights how Chinese Catholics — bishops, priests, religious, and laypeople — have endured intense oppression under the Sino-Vatican agreement. Meanwhile, Rogers noted, Pope Francis has continued diplomacy with Beijing without any visible preconditions for the release of imprisoned bishops or demands for religious freedom protections.
“The fact that the Vatican failed to make the release of all jailed Catholic bishops and priests a precondition for the renewal of the agreement beggars belief,” Rogers declared. “The fact that the Vatican is silent about the plight of its jailed bishops is heart-rending. And the fact that the Vatican renewed its deal — which has delivered no benefits and only facilitated more repression — without any apparent review is an outrage.”
Diplomacy has its place. Negotiations are necessary. Reconciliation is laudable and should always be an objective for the Church. Naivety is forgivable. But complicity and appeasement — to which the Vatican’s approach is moving perilously close — have no place in Catholic social teaching.
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Rogers urged Vatican diplomats “to look to the example of Pope St John Paul II… and remember how he stood up for religious freedom, human rights and dignity against communist tyranny — and won.”
In light of China’s ongoing persecution, Rogers called on all Catholics — priests, religious, and laity alike — to speak out if the Vatican will not.
He said, “If the Vatican won’t speak out, then ordinary Catholics should do so, and at the very least pray for these ten bishops and for all persecuted Catholics in China.”