Rumor has it that a delegation from China is expected to visit the Vatican at the end of June for the regular bilateral meeting to discuss Sino-Vatican relations and the progress of the agreement on the appointment of bishops. The news is not official yet, but the Register has confirmed this through a source from the Vatican and source from China.
The meeting is part of a regular round of meetings, now held twice a year — one at the Vatican and one in China — established as routine following the signing of the agreement for the appointment of bishops in 2022. This agreement has already been renewed three times but has remained confidential.
This is the first time that the meeting would take place under the pontificate of Leo XIV, and therefore, there is much curiosity to understand how it will develop.
The Chinese authorities, who obtained a four-year extension at the last renewal rather than the previously granted two years, want to make the agreement permanent. The Holy See has not balked at this so far because a definitive agreement, or almost, would allow the conditions to be published, making the entire process more transparent.
Controversies
The question is whether it is appropriate to make the process more transparent. During the span between the death of Pope Francis and the election of Leo XIV (sede vacante), the Chinese authorities announced the election of two auxiliary bishops, effectively bypassing the Holy See. On May 16, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, stated that, in any case, those appointments were part of the agreements. Therefore, it was not a case of bypassing papal authority. However, during the sede vacante, episcopal appointments are paused because there is no Pope to make the appointments.
China, however, alternates these signs of “forcing,” if they can be called that, with some signs of openness. Last week, Chinese authorities recognized Bishop Lin Yuntuan, a 73-year-old underground (not sanctioned by the state) bishop since 2017, who was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Fuzhou by Pope Leo XIV.
Bishop Lin’s recognition, Asia News noted, came with the aim of bringing unity within the Fuzhou community, one of the most significant for Chinese Catholicism and yet marked by deep divisions.
In 2017, on the occasion of the appointment of Fuzhou Bishop Joseph Cai Bingrui, 57, who was much younger than him and had previously served as bishop of Xiamen, Bishop Lin called for “active cooperation in guiding the clergy, nuns and faithful of Fuzhou to be obedient and support Bishop Cai,” in the end accepting the appointment and vowing to bring no disunity in his diocese.
China Catholic, the website of the Patriotic Association (the state-sanctioned church), reported on the ceremony of installation.
The event was presided over by the Mindong Bishop Vincenzo Zhan Silu (who is one of the two Chinese bishops who participated in the Synod last October in the Vatican), together, of course, with Bishop Cai and Bishop Peter Wu Yishun of Shaowu (Minbei) prefecture in northern Fujian, one of the last bishops appointed last year under the agreement.
As usual, China Catholic noted that the new auxiliary has vowed to “respect the Constitution and laws of the country, safeguard the unity of the motherland and social harmony, love the country and religion, adhere to the principle of independence and self-management of the Church, follow the direction of the sinicization of Catholicism in our country, and contribute to the overall construction of a modern socialist country and the all-round promotion of the great revival of the Chinese nation.”
The Chinese Attitude
In the face of these formal reassurances, there is a crucial fact: China has recognized — or at least, appeared to recognize — the importance of the “underground” communities, especially in Fujian. Even Cai’s predecessor Bingrui, Bishop Peter Lin Jiashan, who died at the age of 88 in 2023, was a former “clandestine” bishop who had also been subjected to forced labor and was then recognized by the authorities in 2020, again under the Agreement between Beijing and the Holy See.
The Holy See welcomed the news, but it remains to be seen what actual role Bishop Lin will be given — and whether he can help bridge the gap between the official and underground communities.
There is a precedent. In 2018, immediately after the agreement, the Holy See appointed the “official” bishop, Msgr. Zhan Silu, as an ordinary of the diocese of Mindong, flanked by the “clandestine” Vincenzo Guo Xijin as an auxiliary. However, he was marginalized, and after two years, he resigned from the post, suffering severe restrictions even recently.
Leo XIV, however, was also called to deal with the election of two candidate bishops, which took place during the period of the vacant see, with a new auxiliary in Shanghai and a new ordinary of Xinjiang.
On April 28, Wu Jianlin, vicar general of Shanghai, was “elected” as the new auxiliary bishop of Shanghai by a meeting of the members, while on April 29, Father Li Jianlin was elected bishop of Xinjiang. In Xinjiang, by the way, there is already a bishop, Joseph Zhang Weizhu, who was clandestinely appointed by Pope St. John Paul II in 1991 and who was arrested on several occasions for dedicating himself to the ministry for decades without the approval of the Chinese state. Since 2021, he has been detained at an undisclosed location.
Cardinal Parolin explained that this is not a “unilateral” nomination, yet it is a form of abuse because, in a vacant seat, bishops are not nominated. Furthermore, the nomination of an auxiliary to Diocese of Shanghai is problematic.
In 2023, Chinese authorities announced the unilateral decision to transfer Bishop Joseph Shen Bin from the Diocese of Haimen to the vacant Diocese of Shanghai, whose auxiliary, Thaddeus Ma Daqin, had been under house arrest since 2012 for refusing to remain in the Patriotic Association. In this state organization, Beijing wants priests to register in the name of sinicization. Pope Francis later decided to “heal” the appointment, but the rift remained.
The Holy See’s Hand Stretched to China
Pope Francis has reached out to China several times. On March 7, Meng Anming, professor of Developmental Biology at Tsinghua University in Beijing, was named a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The academy is pontifical, but the idea is to include philosophies of all kinds.
It should not be surprising, then, that when one scrolls through the list of academics, one finds a very diverse group of personalities, many of whom are non-Catholic.
Meng Anming was not the first Chinese to be included among the members of the Vatican Academy. Before him, in early June 2023, Bai Tongdong, a Chinese political scientist who attempts to explain geopolitics according to the principles of neo-Confucianism, was among the members of the academy.
At the end of that same month, the same Pontifical Academy hosted a workshop, “Dialogue Between Civilizations and Common Goods,” with the declared aim of understanding emerging realities in the geopolitical field, such as China and India, from the perspective of their own cultures.
But the approach maneuver had begun earlier. In 2017, an international conference on organ trafficking was held at Casina Pio IV, the home of the academy, attended by two Chinese delegates, including Huang Jiefu, president of the Chinese National Committee on Organ Donation and Transplantation and former Chinese vice minister of health.
Catholics in China
Eleven Chinese bishops were appointed under the agreement, with varying degrees of success. On May 24, on the occasion of the Day of Prayer for Christians in China established by Pope Benedict XVI, Asia News published a letter from an underground priest on the delicate issue of the “official registration” that the Chinese authorities now require of all priests.
This priest noted that “for some priests, the registration appears as a compromise with political power, generating a sense of guilt for ‘betrayal of faith,’ which accumulates over time,” noting how there is also a sort of “ambiguity in the relationship with the Pope,” and that pastoral spaces are expanded, but there are several limitations. Among these, public celebrations are put under control; there is limited administrative freedom, the clergy experience strong mental fatigue due to the need to continually renew certifications, while the faithful devoted to the underground/official Church lose confidence and distance themselves.
These are all the issues on the table for the next meeting. It remains to be seen what position Leo XIV will take on the matter after the significant openings made by Pope Francis.
