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ROME – The Vatican said Thursday it had extended an agreement with Beijing on the appointment of bishops in China, weeks after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to the Vatican on a failed mission to kill him.
The announcement renewed for another two years a landmark agreement reached in 2018 that ended a decades-long power struggle over the right to appoint bishops in China, despite concerns about religious freedom and human rights in the country.
The agreement calls for China to formally recognize the Pope’s authority within the Roman Catholic Church and his last word on the country’s bishops. The Vatican, in turn, recognized the legitimacy of bishops previously appointed by the Chinese government and excommunicated by the Church.
Beyond that, the details of the deal have been kept largely confidential, much to the dismay of some critics of Pope Francis.
“The Holy See considers that the initial application of the Agreement, which is of great ecclesial and pastoral value, has been positive, thanks to the good communication and cooperation between the parties in the agreed matters,” the Vatican said in a statement, adding that the Holy See “intends to engage in an open and constructive dialogue for the benefit of the life of the Catholic Church and the good of the Chinese people.”
The continuation of the agreement and cooperation between the two states has led some Vatican experts to view it as a critical step on the road to diplomatic relations with Beijing, which could mean that the Vatican cuts ties with Taiwan.
On Thursday, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said the Holy See had often made it clear that the agreement was pastoral in nature, and not political, while noting that it had expressed its “concern and position” while maintaining close contacts. .
Seeing the announcement of the agreement on Wednesday, Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state and his second ranking official after the pope, said that talking about diplomatic relations was premature.
Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said: “After friendly negotiations, China and the Vatican decided to extend the temporary agreement on the appointment of bishops for two years.”
“The two parties will continue to maintain close communication and consultation, and will continue to promote the process of improving relations,” he added.
The Pope and the Vatican have described the agreement as a step on a long journey to better meet the pastoral needs of Catholics in China, the world’s most populous nation, where the growth of Protestantism is far outpacing Catholicism.
“Today, for the first time in many decades, all the bishops of China are in communion with the Bishop of Rome and, thanks to the implementation of the Agreement, there will be no more illegitimate ordinations”, reads a complementary note. on the agreement published in the official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.
The note said that two bishops, Mons.. Antonio Yao Shun from Jining, an autonomous region of Inner Mongolia, and Mons.. Stefano Xu Hongwei from Hanzhong in central Shaanxi province had been appointed in accordance with the agreement. Other ordinations were in progress, the note said, although the pandemic has slowed things down.
“Statistically, this may not seem like a great result,” the note read. “It represents, however, a good start.”
The agreement has generated opposition from Church conservatives who argue that it sells those who have suffered for decades in China’s underground Catholic Church, because those faithful had refused to recognize the bishops appointed by the communist government and not by Rome. The agreement, they argue, effectively condones China’s religious freedom and human rights violations.
The Vatican newspaper noted that popes before Francis had sought deeper relations with China and that work on the current agreement began with his predecessor, Benedict XVI.
The agreement, he argued, was “exclusively a matter of bishop appointments” and did not address other issues “that still cause concern to the Church.”
Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister, had emphasized “human rights” in his conversations with China’s foreign secretary, the newspaper said. “The Holy See knows them deeply, takes them very much into account,” he added, “and continues to call the attention of the Chinese government to promote a more fruitful exercise of religious freedom.”
In the prelude to the deal negotiations, hackers presumed to be working for the Chinese state by cybersecurity experts appeared to have infiltrated the Vatican’s computer networks. The Vatican went ahead with the talks despite everything and, in its statement, preferred to emphasize the meetings between top Vatican diplomats and their Chinese counterparts.
The Vatican said the actual substance and details of the deal would remain secret and “given its experimental nature, it was kept confidential by mutual consent.”
That upset some critics.
“My main objection to the deal is that we don’t know what it is,” said US Cardinal Raymond Burke, the de facto leader of Pope Francis’ critics within the church, in a brief interview before greeting Pompeo at an event. organized by the United States Embassy in the Vatican last month.
In September, Pompeo angered some of the top Vatican officials, including those negotiating with the Chinese, by publicly calling on the church to halt talks with China to preserve its moral position. The fact that he chose a conservative Christian magazine that criticized the Pope to voice his complaints did not generate much sympathy among church leaders.
The Vatican ignored Pompeo, who was denied a meeting with the Pope. Pompeo’s calls for Francis to follow the model of John Paul II, who stood up to communism but also practiced realpolitik, were seen within the Vatican as an electorate.
“Some sectors of international politics have tried to analyze the work of the Holy See mainly according to a geopolitical consideration,” read a note in the Vatican newspaper, insisting that the agreement was purely an ecclesiastical matter that could, in the creating a spirit of communication. , is “for the benefit of the entire international community”.
