Signed for the first time in 2018 and renewed for the first time in October 2020, this historic agreement has been extended for two additional years. Despite the difficulties sometimes encountered in the dioceses, the Holy See wants to display its confidence.
Last July, questioned by an American journalist, Pope Francis did not hide his wish to see this agreement renewed. The Secretary of State of the Holy See, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who has been following the dossier since its inception, recalled that while the heart of the agreement aims to consolidate ” a good institutional and cultural dialogue with China, it mainly concerns goods essential to the daily life of the Church in China “.
This still “provisional” agreement, the content of which has not been made public, aims to bring together Chinese Catholics divided between an official Church – controlled by Beijing – and an underground Church, while giving the pope the last word in appointing bishops. Since 2018 and the first signature, six bishops have been nominated in accordance with the Chinese authorities and with the approval of the pope.
” We sincerely hope that in the next two years we can continue to identify good candidates for the episcopate for the Church in China according to the established procedure. “, explained Cardinal Parolin to the Vatican media, indicating, moreover, that he closely follows the life of the Chinese Catholic communities which sometimes have difficulty in living their faith freely.
In four years, this agreement has drawn criticism within the Church, some seeing it as a stranglehold by Beijing on the country’s approximately 10 million Catholics, where churches have been destroyed and religious nurseries closed, while the restriction religious freedoms is always singled out. According to the faithful, the crackdown on the underground Church has not diminished since the China-Vatican rapprochement, while the regime of President Xi Jinping seems to be increasing its surveillance of all cults.
Chance of the calendar, the renewal of this China-Holy See agreement, which was about to expire at the end of October, fell on the very day of the closing of the Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.
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