Cardinal Parolin says infamous Vatican-China deal will be renewed at end of 2024

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Cardinal Parolin says infamous Vatican-China deal will be renewed at end of 2024
Cardinal Pietro Parolin says the Vatican continues to ‘dialogue’ with Communist China and plans to renew its secretive deal with Beijing yet again, despite the widely criticized deal leading to increased persecution of the faithful Church in China.



Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican-China deal
LifeSiteNews

Jun 21, 2024
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews [adapted - not all hyperlinks included from original]) — Cardinal Pietro Parolin has announced that the Vatican will renew its heavily criticized secret deal with Communist China at the end of this year.

During a presentation of the book Cardinal Celso Costantini and China – Constructor of a “bridge” between the East and West on Thursday at Rome’s Pontifical Urban University, Parolin told journalists, “With China, we are dialoguing as we have been for some time.”

READ: Cardinal Zen torches the Vatican and his critics over China deal

“We are trying to find the best procedures also for the application of the Agreement signed at the time and which will be renewed at the end of this year,” the Vatican secretary of state said.

Parolin also signaled that Pope Francis would be willing to visit China but added that this does not seem realistic at this point.

“Certainly the Pope is willing to go to China, indeed he wishes to go to China,” he said. “It does not seem to me that, so far, there are the conditions for this wish of the Pope to come to fruition.”

The Vatican secretary of state alluded to alleged “positive developments” resulting from the Vatican-China deal, which he claimed “give us hope that more and greater ones will follow.”

READ: Pope Francis bows to Communist China and confirms bishop appointed by Beijing

“As a result of the Agreement, all the Bishops in the land of Confucius are in full communion with the Church of Peter,” Parolin said, expressing his desire for a continuation of “the dialogue and the process initiated by Chinese Catholics to foster greater concord under the guidance of their pastors, in full communion with the Pope who has given so much proof of his love for that great people.”

The controversial deal between the Vatican and the Chinese Communist government was first signed in 2018 and renewed in 2020 and 2022.


A shady deal at the expense of faithful Chinese Catholics

The officially secret Vatican-China deal is believed to recognize the state-approved church in China and allows the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to appoint bishops. The Pope apparently maintains veto power, although in practice it is the CCP that has control. It also allegedly allows for the removal of legitimate bishops to be replaced by CCP-approved bishops.

Speaking in July 2023, Parolin defended the secretive nature of the deal, stating that “the text is confidential because it has not yet been finally approved.” The deal, which “revolves around the basic principle of consensuality of decisions affecting bishops,” is effected by “trusting in the wisdom and goodwill of all,” Parolin said.

READ: Pope Francis’ deal with Communist China has led to greater persecution of Catholics

Pope Francis and Parolin have both been vocal in their defense of the agreement, with the Pope stating before its 2022 renewal that the deal “is going well.” Indeed, in a 2018 letter to Chinese Catholics, Francis described the deal as forming a “new chapter of the Catholic Church in China.”

But outside the walls of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, criticism has come from Catholic clergy, freedom advocates, China experts, and numerous others.

The highly secretive Sino-Vatican deal has been condemned by Hong Kong emeritus Cardinal Joseph Zen as an “incredible betrayal,” with the much-loved cardinal further accusing the Vatican of “selling out” Chinese Catholics.

In 2018, the prelate called for Parolin to resign, criticizing his “complete surrender” of the Church to the Communist authorities.

“It’s a betrayal of the real Church,” Cardinal Zen then said of the deal in July 2020 before adding: “It’s not an isolated episode. It’s already a long-standing policy of the Vatican not to offend the Chinese government.”

READ: Chinese Catholic bishops and priests remain imprisoned by communist regime despite Vatican deal

The ink had barely dried on the deal in 2018 before AsiaNews, a site that regularly documents the abductions and torturing of underground Catholics, reported that “(u)nderground Catholics bitterly suspect that the Vatican has abandoned them.”

Before the first renewal of the deal in 2020, then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned that “(t)he Vatican endangers its moral authority, should it renew the deal.” He linked to an article he penned on the subject in which he stated that “it’s clear that the Sino-Vatican agreement has not shielded Catholics from the Party’s depredations.”

Indeed, in the nearly six years since the deal was implemented, persecution of Catholics – particularly the “underground” Catholics who do not accept the state-controlled church – has demonstrably increased.

READ: Catholic diocese of Hong Kong ‘working with CCP’ to effect ‘Sinicization’: report

The deal has led to a heightened increase in religious persecution, which the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China described as a direct consequence of the deal. In its 2020 report, the Commission wrote that the persecution witnessed is “of an intensity not seen since the Cultural Revolution.”

“All bishops who refuse to join the Catholic Patriotic Association are being placed under house arrest, or disappeared, by the CCP,” China expert Steven Moser told LifeSiteNews earlier this month. “Although the Vatican said several years ago that the Sino-Vatican agreement does not require anyone to join this schismatic organization, refusal to do so results in persecution and punishment. And the Vatican stands by and does nothing.”

The closest the Holy See has come to acknowledging shortcomings with the deal is via its foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. The archbishop, who serves as Vatican Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations, said last year that the deal was “not the best deal possible” due to the “other party.”

Indeed, a series of episcopal appointments since the last renewal of the deal in October 2022 have highlighted the primacy of power wielded by Beijing in the deal. On three known occasions, the CCP appointed new bishops or appointed them to new dioceses, leaving the Vatican to play catch-up with the events and express its diplomatically worded frustration.

New developments in favor of the Vatican in the deal appear, therefore, unlikely. In July 2023, Parolin had stated the Holy See hopes for “the opening of an established liaison office of the Holy See in China” that “would not only favor dialogue with the civil authorities but also contribute to full reconciliation within the Chinese Church and its journey towards a desirable normality.”