| 15 October, 2022
By renewing its secret agreement with Beijing, the Vatican is dangerously close to becoming complicit in the Chinese government’s growing rights violations.
(The Nation/Maya Wang) The Vatican and the Chinese government are scheduled to renew an agreement they signed in 2018 this October. That agreement, which has never been made public, is believed to give the Chinese government the power to choose bishops and the Vatican the ability to veto them.
Human Rights Watch and many others, including from within the Roman Catholic Church, have repeatedly criticized these agreements. Even when the agreement was first signed, it was clear that President Xi Jinping’s China was very repressive, even towards religious freedom. In Xinjiang, the government has detained up to a million Uyghurs and other Turkish Muslims, surveilled the entire population, and attempted to annihilate minority culture, including razing thousands of mosques. On August 31, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a damning report corroborating these abuses and concluding that the Chinese government may have committed crimes against humanity.
Xi has trampled on human rights throughout China, driven by his feverish “China dream.” Seemingly dissatisfied with the Chinese Communist Party’s weakened control over the population after decades of economic growth, Xi reasserted control in the name of the “great rejuvenation” of the Chinese nation. Conveniently, he also tightened his own grip on the Party bureaucracy, becoming China’s most powerful—and abusive—leader since Mao Zedong. In October, just as the Holy See is to renew its agreement with the Chinese government, Xi will begin an unprecedented third term as Party Secretary General.
One of the pillars of Xi’s “China dream” is the government’s efforts to reorient people’s allegiance to the Party and thus to Xi. Those who promote alternative worldviews – such as universal human rights, faith or spirituality – are persecuted and “re-educated”.
The Chinese government’s efforts to “sinicize” religions seem to go beyond the imposition of increasing controls and entail a comprehensive reshaping of religions, from Tibetan Buddhism to Catholicism. Orders all religious establishments in China to fly the national flag and hold flag-raising ceremonies; replace “Western” religious icons, architecture and music with “traditional Chinese” versions; and promote “socialist core values” and Xi Jinping Thought so that followers “love the motherland and obey the power of the state.” By controlling symbols, teachings, and personnel, Beijing is fundamentally transforming these religions so that they promote loyalty, not to people’s religious beliefs, but to the Party.
Why did the Vatican decide to sign an agreement with the Chinese government at one of the times of greatest religious oppression? In 2020, Pope Francis made a passing mention of calling Uyghurs “persecuted”, so he is evidently aware of Beijing’s abuses. Pope Francis has praised the Vatican-China deal as “diplomacy” and “the art of the possible,” comparing the Vatican’s rapprochement with China to previous efforts by the Vatican to co-exist with the Soviet Union and maintain Catholicism’s presence. in the country. The Vatican may think it will get better access to Catholics throughout China. In late September, it was reported that the Vatican might soon set up a mission in Beijing.
What, then, is the bottom line for the Vatican? In May, Beijing, through the Hong Kong police, arrested Cardinal Zen, a 90-year-old defender of human rights and democracy, who had organized a humanitarian and legal fund for detained protesters. He was arrested for “collusion with foreign forces”, an offense under the draconian new National Security Law which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, and was also charged with the offense of failing to properly register the fund, with a maximum fine of HK$10,000 ($1,274). Although the Vatican expressed “concern” about his arrest, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said he hoped the arrest would not “complicate the dialogue between the Vatican and China.”
The Vatican has made it chillingly clear that neither Zen’s arrest, nor the continued arrests, enforced disappearances and imprisonments of Catholic bishops and followers in China – such as Henan Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu or Hebei Bishop Cui Tai – will influence in their actions.
By renewing a secret agreement with Beijing, the Vatican is in effect endorsing the Chinese government’s perversion of religions and is dangerously close to being complicit in the country’s growing rights violations. But there is still time to make a 180-degree turn: make public its agreement with China, ensure that it respects religious freedom and pressure Beijing to drop the charges and investigations against Cardinal Zen and release Bishops Zhang Weizhu and Cui Tai. If your Catholic brothers and sisters in China have managed to persist in defending justice and human rights despite decades of persecution, the Vatican can surely find the moral courage to stand up for them.
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