VATICAN—The Vatican expects to renew its interim deal with China on the appointment of bishops, as part of efforts to “normalize” the life of the Catholic Church in China, Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said recently.
“With China, our current interest is to normalize the life of the Church as much as possible, to ensure that the Church can live a normal life, which for the Catholic Church is also to have relations with the Holy See and with the pope,” Parolin said, according to Italian news agency AgenSIR.
A Bloomberg News report on September 9 said the accord is due to be rolled over, possibly for another two years, in the coming weeks, according to two people familiar with the matter who declined to be named discussing confidential talks.
A Vatican spokesman declined to comment.
“Our perspective is on this ecclesiastical theme,” Parolin added, noting that this goal should also take place “against a backdrop of peaceful coexistence, the search for peace and overcoming tensions.”
Cardinal Parolin spoke to journalists on the sidelines of a private event with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, held at the Italian Embassy to the Holy See in Rome, on September 14.
Responding to questions, Parolin also said the Vatican’s intention “is that [the deal] be prolonged, that we continue to adopt it ad experimentum.”
“If there is the same intention on their part too? I think and hope so,” he said, calling the results of the two-year provisional agreement “not particularly exciting.”
The provisional agreement signed by the Vatican and China on September 22, 2018, is due to expire in October.
Parolin spoke at an event titled “Forty-five years after the Helsinki Accords, Cardinal Silvestrini and the Vatican Östpolitik,” organized by the Italian ambassador to the Holy See.
Crosses removed, Church buildings demolished
Following the Vatican-China agreement in 2018, state officials in different regions of China have continued to remove crosses and demolish Church buildings, and underground Catholics and clergy continue to report harassment and detention.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the state-affiliated Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the Zhejiang province’s Chinese Catholic educational administration committee issued new regulations on the reopening of Churches requiring Chinese “patriotism” to be added to the celebration of the liturgy.
There are also more than 50 dioceses without bishops on the mainland of China.
Despite mounting international condemnation of China’s internment of more than 1 million Uighurs in concentration camps, where human-rights agencies have reported repeated actions of crimes against human rights and “genocide,” the Holy See has not commented publicly on the situation.
A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said on September 10 that China’s interim deal with the Vatican has been “implemented successfully.”
The Chinese government spokesman also said that the Vatican and China had “accumulated more mutual trust and consensus through a series of positive interactions” since the beginning of 2020, citing mutual support during the Covid-19 pandemic.
China: Vatican a ‘soft superpower’
Relations between the Vatican and China were broken off in 1951 and reaching a settlement with the Communist Party has proved elusive, especially as President Xi Jinping presides over the most widespread crackdown on religious freedom since it was written into the country’s constitution in 1982.
Chinese authorities have jailed Catholic priests, demolished places of worship and detained hundreds of thousands of Muslim ethnic Uyghurs in reeducation camps.
So any rapprochement with Beijing is sensitive, especially since China’s ultimate goal would be for the Vatican to cut ties with Taiwan.
The democratically-run island, which China regards as a part of its territory, counts the Vatican as its last partner in Europe. It retains official ties with only 15 nations worldwide.
That puts the tiny walled city state inside Rome at the center of a geopolitical minefield at a time when tensions between the West and China are running high.
“China wants to talk to the Vatican because it realizes the Vatican is a soft superpower—when the Pope speaks, everyone listens,” said Francesco Sisci, a senior researcher at the Renmin University in Beijing.
The US administration has sought to bolster Taiwan’s diplomatic profile, warning countries against cutting ties and sending Health Secretary Alex Azar to make the US’s highest-level visit since recognizing Beijing in 1979.
Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil predicted during his own subsequent trip there this month that Taipei would see similar support from European officials.
For its part, the Vatican seeks more protection and a degree of legitimacy for an estimated 12 million Catholics in China that are currently divided between a state-run authority where the government names the bishops and an “underground” Church loyal to the pope.
China wary
The agreement, which has not been published, gives both sides a say in appointing the Church’s bishops in China. Under the accord, proposed bishops are picked by elections and the bishops’ conference in China, then put forward to the pope, who has power of veto, according to a person familiar with the issue.
China is wary of making the provisional agreement a permanent one, according to Wang Yiwei, a former Chinese diplomat in Brussels and director of China’s Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University. It also remains unsure about the Vatican’s future direction, he said.
For Lawrence Reardon, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire who studies China-Vatican ties, restoring relations with the Vatican would be a propaganda coup for China.
It is problematic for the pope because the Vatican is seeing more repression of Catholics and it doesn’t want to sacrifice its Taiwanese followers.
Even with both sides wary, the direction of travel is clear. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s secretary for relations with states, in a rare high-level encounter at the Munich Security Conference in February.
Wang said at the time that China is “willing to further enhance understanding with the Vatican side.”
Image credits: Vatican Media