On Thursday October 22 the Holy See renewed for a further two years the “provisional agreement” it made with Communist China in 2018. Although that agreement is secret at its heart, among other matters, is the issue of the appointment of bishops in China. The aim of the Chinese Communist Party is to unite the Communist-backed Catholic Patriotic Association with the “underground” Church in a single body under the control of the Chinese state. So far as we can tell the 2018 agreement regulated that the Beijing authorities will present the pope with a terna (the names of three individuals who are deemed worthy of the episcopacy) and the pope will select one of these. The Holy See has permitted this state of affairs, although it is specifically forbidden by the Code of Canon Law of 1983, canon 377 s. 5: “no right or privileges [are] to be conceded to the civil authorities in regard to the election, nomination or presentation to bishoprics.”
From the Vatican viewpoint the agreement’s renewal reiterates official recognition of the status of the pope and Catholicism in China. From Beijing’s viewpoint, as articulated by President Xi Jingping in 2016, this is part of the process of “sinicization” of all religious bodies in the country, the Catholic Church included. The Vatican’s hope is that if it can achieve a settlement with China that this will lead to the reestablishment of diplomatic relations, which were broken by Mao Zedong’s government in 1951 amid accusations that the Vatican was involved in a plot to assassinate the communist leader, and that it was involved in espionage. Pope Francis has made clear his hopes of visiting China, whose Catholic population is estimated to be between 10-12 million. There are thought to be some 60 million Protestants in China and the hope is that if friendlier relations obtain the Catholic Church will be ripe for expansion. The overall hope at the Vatican is the restoration of diplomatic relations. If these are restored China will insist that the Holy See break off its relations with Taiwan. At present the Vatican is the only state in Europe which has relations with Taipei. The Holy See will have no compunction in jettisoning Taiwan for the greater prize of sending a Nuncio, a papal ambassador, to Beijing.
This cozying up to the Communist world is directed by the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin who before his appointment as Nuncio to Venezuela in 2009 was in charge of China policy at the Holy See. His dispatch under Pope Benedict to represent the interests of the Vatican to the dictator Hugo Chávez was something of a demotion; his friends ensured his return to the second highest office in the Church under Francis. Both Parolin personally and Vatican China policy have been severely criticized not least by Cardinal Joseph Zen, the retired bishop of Hong Kong. Zen believes the 2018 agreement should be seen in the same light as the Concordat with Hitler in 1933, and not, as some have argued, in terms of the Concordat with Napoleon in 1801.
Some Vatican officials go out of their way to praise the Chinese government. Archbishop Sanchez Sorondo, the Chancellor of the Papal Academy of Sciences, has observed that China is an example of a country “best implementing the social doctrine of the Church.” This about a regime which has practiced forced abortion, sterilization, and which has interned some 1 million Uyghur Muslims in reeducation camps. Given Sorondo’s views, Cardinal Zen wonders what planet Vatican officials come from. He has also accused Parolin of lying about the Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s approval of the 2018 agreement.
Criticism has also come from governmental sources. The U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, wrote a sustained criticism of the Vatican’s China policy in the September 18 online version of First Things. There he argued that the Holy See had a unique capacity to denounce human rights violations in China and the Beijing-inspired repression in Hong Kong. In early October the Vatican refused Pompeo’s request for a meeting with Pope Francis in the context of a conference in Rome organized by the American Embassy to the Holy See. The ostensible reason was that it was too close to the forthcoming Presidential election in the U.S.; privately Vatican officials conceded that it was anger generated by Pompeo’s article which brought about the rebuff.
In fact some of Pompeo’s remarks were a restatement of the views of the respected senior British statesman Lord Patten, the last Governor of Hong Kong. Writing in the British Catholic weekly, The Tablet, in July Patten spoke of the Vatican’s “extraordinary convolutions over China policy.” He also criticized the Vatican for its failure to denounce human rights abuses in China and Hong Kong.
Featured image courtesy of bici via NeedPix
Fr. Oliver Plunkett Rafferty, S.J., is a Jesuit priest and a native of Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has written extensively on Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries and has also written on the relationship between the Catholic Church and the state in Northern Ireland from the formation of the state to the present. He is the author of several dozen articles at a scholarly level and very many at the popular level. He is the co-author of four books as well as the sole author of four.
- Concerning The Holy See and China - October 29, 2020