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AGI – The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, invites the Vatican not to renew the agreement with China on the appointment of bishops.
“Two years ago, the Holy See reached an agreement with the Communist Party of China, hoping to help Chinese Catholics. But The abuse of the faithful by the Chinese Communist Party has only gotten worse. The Vatican would put its moral authority at risk if it renewed the agreement, “Pompeo wrote in a tweet that relaunches an article signed by him in the prestigious magazine ‘First Things’. On September 29 and 30 Pompeo will be in Rome for institutional meetings and on the agenda there is also an interview in the Vatican with Pope Francis.
Two years ago, the Holy See reached an agreement with the Communist Party of China, hoping to help China’s Catholics. However, the CCP’s abuse of the faithful has only gotten worse. The Vatican endangers its moral authority if it renews the deal. https://t.co/fl0TEnYxKS
– Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) September 19, 2020
“No regime represses the faith on a larger scale than the Chinese Communist Party.” added in another tweet, Pompeo. “More than a million Uyghurs and other Muslims have been forcibly taken to internment camps,” adds the head of US diplomacy, “subjected to surveillance, torture, forced abortion and sterilization – all part of a decades-long struggle against faith for the Communist Party of China. “
For Pompeo “the agreement did not protect Catholics”
“The human rights situation in China has seriously deteriorated under the autocratic rule of Xi Jinping, especially for religious believers.” Thus begins the article published by ‘Firts Things’ signed by the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, which cites “the program of the Chinese Communist Party of forced sterilization and abortion of Muslims in Xinjiang, their abuse of priests and laity Catholics and their attack on Protestant house churches, all of which are part of a “sinicization” campaign to subordinate God to the Party promoting Xi himself as a deity of the world. Now more than ever, the Chinese people need the moral witness and authority of the Vatican in support of Chinese religious believers, ”Pompeo warns.
“Two years later – continues the Secretary of State of the United States – it is clear that the agreement between China and the Vatican did not protect Catholics from the depredations of the Party, not to mention the horrible treatment that the Party gave to Christians, Buddhists Tibetans, Falun Gong devotees, and other religious believers. ” Pompeo cites “the 2019 State Department annual report on religious freedom” and “the story of Father Paul Zhang Guangjun, who was beaten and ‘disappeared’ for refusing to join the CCP-led Catholic Patriotic Association.” And, Pompeo notes, “sadly, their experience is not unique. Communist authorities continue to close churches, spy on and harass the faithful, and insist that the Party is the supreme authority on religious matters.”
“As part of the 2018 agreement – underlines the head of US diplomacy – the Vatican has legitimized Chinese priests and bishops whose loyalty remains unclear, confusing Chinese Catholics who had always trusted the Church. Many refuse to pray in places of worship authorized by the State, for fear that, revealing themselves as faithful Catholics, they suffer the same abuses suffered by other believers at the hands of atheism increasingly aggressive by the Chinese authorities ”.
“Do not encourage the violation of rights”
If the Chinese Communist Party “succeeds in bringing the Catholic Church and other religious communities to their knees, regimes that disregard human rights will be encouragedIt is one of the warnings launched by Mike Pompeo in his article in the prestigious magazine ‘First Things’, in which he asks the Vatican not to renew the agreement reached with Beijing on the appointment of bishops.
Pompeo recalls that “many nations have joined the United States in expressing revulsion at the increase in human rights violations, including religious freedom, by the Chinese regime. Last year, 22 nations sent a letter to the Humanitarian Rights Council of the UN to denounce the CCP’s arrest of more than one million Muslim Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs and other minorities in so-called “re-education” camps in Xinjiang. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which includes legislators from democracies around the world the world, condemned the Party’s ‘atrocities’. The State Department has been a strong voice for religious freedom in China and around the world and has taken steps to hold those who abuse the faithful accountable for their actions. ” .
Pompeo then launched an appeal to the Holy See, which has “a unique capacity and duty to focus the world’s attention on human rights violations, particularly those perpetrated by totalitarian regimes such as Beijing. At the end of the 20th century , The Church’s Power of Moral Witness has helped inspire those who liberated Central and Eastern Europe from communism and those who challenged the autocratic and authoritarian regimes of Latin America and East Asia. “
For Pompeo, therefore, “the same power of moral witness should be used today against the Communist Party of China. The Second Vatican Council and Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis have taught that religious freedom is the first of the civil rights. Solidarity is one of the four fundamental principles of Catholic social doctrine. What the Church teaches the world about religious freedom and solidarity must now be transmitted with force and perseverance by the Vatican in the face of the tireless efforts of the Chinese Communist Party to subdue all religious communities at the will of the Party and its totalitarian program. “
“Pope Francis – concludes Pompeo – said in 2013 that ‘Christians must respond to evil with good, taking up the cross on themselves as Jesus did.’ History teaches us that totalitarian regimes can only survive in darkness and in silence, their crimes and brutality unnoticed and ignored. If the Communist Party of China succeeds in bringing the Catholic Church and other religious communities to their knees, regimes that disregard human rights will be encouraged and the cost of resisting tyranny will increase for all. Brave religious believers who honor God above the autocrat of the time. I pray that, in relations with the Communist Party of China, the Holy See and all those who believe in the divine spark that illuminates all human life, they will hear the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John: ‘The truth will set you free’.
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