Holy See - China: contents of agreement between Pope Francis and Xi Jinping still remain 'secret'

• On October 22, 2024, the Holy See and the Chinese government renewed, for the third time, the 2018 “Provisional Agreement regarding the Appointment of Bishops.” The 2024 renewal is for four years. Previous renewals, in 2020 and 2022, were for two years.

• The Provisional Agreement ended decades of episcopal ordinations without papal consent, leading to a dramatically changed scenario in the past six years. Since then, about ten bishops have been appointed and consecrated, and Beijing has officially recognized the public role of several previously unrecognized bishops.

• Xi Jinping, for his part, has every interest in intensifying relations with the Vatican as part of an international policy of building alliances in Europe, with the aim of weakening American hegemony. In any case, relations between the Vatican and Beijing are highly asymmetrical, as the CCP's concessions to Chinese Catholics seem to be nil or almost nil.

• Under Xi Jinping there has been the "sinicization" of religions. The revival of many forms of religious beliefs and practices has been met since its advent by new forms of repression and control. The basic policy of the party and the state had been set out in a couple of documents promulgated in the early 1980s.

• In addition, some activists and organizations have accused the Chinese government of explanting organs to prisoners by force. In June 2021, several United Nations experts issued a statement expressing alarm regard to allegations of organ explantation “against minorities, including practitioners of Falun Gong, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims, and Christians, in detention in China.”

On October 22, 2024, the Holy See and the Chinese government renewed, for the third time, the 2018 “Provisional Agreement regarding the Appointment of Bishops.” The 2024 renewal is for four years. Previous renewals, in 2020 and 2022, were for two years. Just prior to the recent renewal, the Chinese government officially recognized Melchior Shi Hongzhen, 95, an “underground” bishop who had faced years of persecution.

“In light of the consensus reached for the effective implementation of the Provisional Agreement on the Appointment of Bishops, after appropriate consultations and evaluations, the Holy See and the People's Republic of China have agreed to further extend its validity for four years from the current date,” reads a statement released by the Holy See Press Office on Oct. 22, 2024.

The 2018 agreement, the full text of which has never been made public, ended a decades-long standoff over who had the authority to appoint bishops in China. Under the agreement, Beijing proposes names for future bishops, and the pope has veto power over those appointments. The Vatican has never exercised such power, however, even when the Chinese government violated the agreement by unilaterally appointing bishops in 2022 and 2023. Since the 2018 agreement, the two parties have agreed on the appointment of 10 bishops; covering about a third of the over 90 dioceses in China that remain without a bishop.

The 2018 Holy See-China agreement was reached in the midst of President Xi Jinping’s increasing efforts to tighten already stringent controls over religions in China. The Chinese government restricts religious practice to five officially recognized religions in officially approved premises and retains control over religious bodies’ personnel appointments, publications, finances, and seminary applications.

"As part of the repression of Christians in China, a population estimated at up to 70 million, the CCP has imprisoned pastors, closed churches, banned online religious services and contemplated a plan to rewrite the Bible to purge it of ideas that conflict with Party dogma."

The government has pressured the country’s estimated 12 million Catholics to worship in official churches under the leadership of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. It has persecuted Catholics who have refused to worship in official churches, attending underground “house churches,” or who pledge allegiance only to the pope.

Since 2016, when Xi pledged to “Sinicize” religion, the authorities have demolished hundreds of church buildings or the crosses atop them, prevented adherents from gathering in unofficial churches, restricted access to the Bible, confiscated religious materials unauthorized by the government, and banned Bible and religious apps.

Are the clouds beginning to clear between the Holy See and Beijing?

The news was discreetly published in the Bulletin of the Press Room of the Holy See on May 14, 2024, announcing a conference on the history of relations between the Vatican and Beijing scheduled for the following May 21.

The conference arrived with a ready-made pretext, since it was to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the first synod of the Catholic Church in China, held in Shanghai on May 15, 1924. It was a first in an unstable world which had just proclaimed the fall of last emperor of the Qing dynasty.

Several bishops, vicars general, and religious, most of them born in distant countries and arriving on Chinese soil as missionaries, met under the presidency of Celso Costantini, apostolic delegate to China, with the mandate of relaunching the Church’s mission on Chinese soil.

In this Apostolic Letter of 1919, Benedict XV reaffirmed that faith in Christ “(was not) alien to any country” and that, in any part of the world, to become a Christian did not mean “placing oneself under the protection and power of another country and escaping the law of one’s own.” A century later, the Roman conference is a way of assuring the Chinese authorities that the communist state has nothing to fear from the Church, while the Holy See wants to establish closer ties with Beijing.

These trips could not be made without the approval of the Chinese executive. For the record, Bishop Shen Bin had been the subject of particular tensions between the Vatican and China, since the Chinese authorities had unilaterally decided, in April 2023, on his appointment. As a sign of goodwill, Rome had given in.

It should be noted that Bishop Shen Bin is vice-president of the Patriotic Association of Chinese Catholics, dependent on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). During 2024, the prelate has repeatedly mentioned the adherence required of Chinese Catholics to the principles of China, supporting the government's sinicization program.

The “sinicization” of religions

Under Xi Jinping there has been the "sinicization" of religions. The revival of many forms of religious beliefs and practices has been met since its advent by new forms of repression and control. The basic policy of the party and the state had been set out in a couple of documents promulgated in the early 1980s.

The ideological basis was the so-called theory of "Marxist secularization", according to which religion would inevitably disappear and, since its end would take a long time, in the meantime heavy attempts at repression should have been avoided, because they were counterproductive.

Policies included government supervision and the management of religious practices through state institutions controlled by the United Front Department of Labour. The new regulations enacted in 2018 retain most of the policy tools of the 1980s, but have been streamlined to achieve greater efficiency and more effective supervision.

The ideological framework is now based primarily on "Sinicization" rather than Marxism. Because Sinicization generally requires adaptation to an idealized version of Han Chinese culture, outsiders to this culture, such as Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and Muslims, particularly Uyghurs, are subject to even harsher repression than they were under the earlier Marxist ideology.

Han Chinese Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism are treated somewhat better, although they too are subject to state restrictions. The imperative of sinicization was formally enshrined in the regulation of religion in Xi Jinping's keynote speech to the Communist Party's National Conference on Religious Work in April 2016. The key themes of Xi's speech were: firstly, the need to achieve a "sinicisation" of all religions and, secondly, the need to manage religions according to the state and to make this management more effective.

In a 5-hour speech to the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, Xi Jinping spoke of the need to "uphold the principle that religions in China must be Chinese-oriented and provide active guidance to religions, so that they can adapt to socialist society." Although Sinicization appeals to the "great traditional Chinese culture", it is not the same as "indigenization".

All forms of culture, secular and religious, must "adapt to socialist society". According to this logic, Confucianism must also be "sinicized". The main imperative is to homogenize Chinese culture to make all parties conform to a party-led nationalism and to use the full force of the state to control dissenting voices. "As some Chinese say, Zhongguohua (sinicization) actually means tinghua (obedience)"

Xi Jinping has partly replaced Marxist ideology with his own notion of sinicization. The term should lead to ideological coherence.

Xi's rhetoric is often sprinkled with words and phrases from Confucius and Mencius and that the Ministry of Cultural Affairs has sponsored the renovation of the huge Confucian temple in Confucius' hometown of Qufu and supports public rituals during holidays. But sinicization means that, while affirming those parts of Confucianism By promoting obedience to authority and the projection of Chinese power, the government controls and limits the increasingly popular and bottom-up development of the Confucian cult.

Everyone, including members of all religions, should conform to the core values of this Han Chinese view. Even among the Han, this requires a homogenization of local cultures to conform to the unified vision of what it must mean to be Chinese. Adherents of "foreign religions," such as Christianity, may need additional guidance. Ethnic minorities such as Tibetans and Uyghurs should require even greater effort.

In addition, some activists and organizations have accused the Chinese government of explanting organs to prisoners by force. In June 2021, several United Nations experts issued a statement expressing alarm regard to allegations of organ explantation “against minorities, including practitioners of Falun Gong, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims, and Christians, in detention in China.”