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VATICAN CITY: The Vatican and China are preparing to renew a landmark agreement on the appointment of bishops that has slightly thawed relations, much to the chagrin of the United States.
Pope Francis has been working hard to repair ties with the communist country, but his proposals run counter to US President Donald Trump’s efforts to push a religious freedom issue against China in his campaign for a second term. .
The president’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, went on the offensive last week in an article in the American religious magazine First Things, criticizing the “horrible” persecution of believers of all faiths in China.
He wrote that many countries had expressed “revulsion” for “accelerating human rights violations.”
“The Vatican endangers its moral authority if it renews the deal,” he added on Twitter.
China’s roughly 12 million Catholics have been divided for decades between a government-run association, whose clergy is elected by the atheist Communist Party, and an unofficial underground church loyal to the Vatican.
The latter recognizes the authority of the Pope and is often persecuted for it.
After years of tortoise-beat negotiations, the Vatican sealed a historic “interim” agreement with Beijing on September 22, 2018, the exact content of which has never been released.
The key development, however, was that both Beijing and the Vatican now have a say in the appointment of Catholic bishops.
Francis immediately recognized eight Chinese bishops who had been appointed by Beijing without his approval.
Since then, two new bishops have been appointed in China, with the approval of the head of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics.
And in a historic step earlier this year, the foreign ministers of China and the Vatican met publicly at an international event for the first time in seven decades.
‘Very little fruit’
Pope Francis has just given the go-ahead for the renewal of the agreement, which is still in “experimental” mode, for another two years, a source close to the dossier told AFP.
The extension is expected to be signed next month.
Meanwhile, Vatican diplomats are raising thorny issues, such as the sudden disappearance of Chinese Catholic priests from their parishes for weeks “at the invitation” of the authorities, by Vatican diplomats, the source said.
One of the Catholic Church’s leading experts on Chinese affairs, Father Bernardo Cervellera, told the religious news site Cruxnow.com earlier this month that the deal may have attracted a lot of fanfare but has so far produced “very little fruit ”.
And he expressed his hope that the Vatican, by renewing the agreement, will be tougher on China.
Diplomatic relations between Beijing and the Holy See were severed in 1951, two years after the Communists came to power.
Efforts to revive them are hampered by the Vatican’s decision to maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Beijing considers the island, with a population of 23 million, to be a separatist Chinese province awaiting reunification.
The Vatican is Taiwan’s only diplomatic tie in Europe and Cervellera said he feared China would demand its break.
A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday that the interim agreement with the Vatican has been “successfully implemented” and said there had been an increase in “mutual trust and consensus.”
Pope Francis’ right-hand man, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said in mid-September that the “current interest of the Catholic Church with China is to normalize the life of the Church as much as possible.”
He admitted that the results so far “have not been particularly surprising.”
