Between July, August, and September, the first four ordinations of bishops entirely attributable to Leo’s pontificate were celebrated in China. The previous two bishops, ordained in the fall of 2025, had been selected unilaterally by the Chinese authorities in the interregnum between the death of Pope Francis and the election of his successor.
And this year too, everything happened as established in the secret agreement on the appointment of bishops signed by Beijing and Rome in 2018 and currently extended until 2028. Each time with two separate press releases issued by the press office of the Holy See and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. The former with the announcement of the concluded ordination, with the new bishop’s biography and the notification of the date on which the pope appointed him. The latter with the names of the bishops who performed the ordination and a reference to the “official” appointment of the new bishop attributed to the Council of Chinese Bishops (a pseudo episcopal conference not recognized by Rome), dated a few months before the pope’s acceptance of the appointment, of which not even the slightest mention is ever made.
Theoretically, the pope would have the ability to reject an appointment initially made by the Chinese authorities, but in practice this has never happened. Since the agreement came into force, Rome has always endorsed the appointments determined by Beijing, even when made in clear violation of the agreement itself, as with the current bishop of Shanghai, Joseph Shen Bin.
Of the four recent episcopal ordinations, the most significant is that of Joseph Chang Yanfeng as head of the diocese of Chifeng, in the province of Inner Mongolia.
For decades in this region a massive immigration of Han ethnic populations has been underway, which has now reduced the original Mongolian population to less than a fifth. This for the stated goal of promoting national unity in culture, traditions, and language, with Mandarin imposed beginning in the schools.
And the new bishop of Chifeng is more than aligned with this political directive, which most recently took shape in a law “for the promotion of the progress of national unity,” in symbiosis with the process of “sinicization” of religions as well, very dear to President Xi Jinping.
Last June 30, in fact, when Pope Leo had already appointed him bishop but before the appointment became public, Chang Yanfeng held a meeting with diocesan leaders and political officials precisely to “actively adapt” the diocese itself “to the demands of the ethnic and religious work of the new era, regularly promoting education in national unity and the study of law, maintaining authentic faith and practice, strengthening the unity of the faithful through rigorous discipline and ensuring, through the rule of law, harmony, stability, and good order in the Catholic sector,” as related in an official report.
That this is the political stance that inspires the selection of new bishops on the part of the Chinese authorities received confirmation at the end of August in the inauguration in Wuhan of an exhibition hall dedicated to the “patriotic and Catholic works of Dong Guangqing,” the first bishop ordained in China without the mandate of the Holy See, in 1958, at the height of Mao Zedong’s rule.
The singing of this bishop’s praises, “pioneer of the path of independence, autonomy, and self-management,” on the opening day of the exhibition, was seen to by today’s two highest representatives of the Chinese Catholic Church affiliated with the regime : Shanghai bishop Joseph Shen Bin, president of the Council of Chinese Bishops, and Beijing bishop Joseph Li Shan, president of the Patriotic Association.
A similar museum of the sinicization of the Chinese Church was opened in Beijing back in 2023, coinciding with the fifteenth anniversary of Li Shan’s appointment. And another is being planned to be built in Shanghai.
Meanwhile, on September 3 a Hong Kong court upheld the 2022 conviction of Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, 96, a staunch defender of the freedom of the Church and of all citizens of his city and China, for raising funds to support protesters detained or injured during protests, but always against the backdrop of the never-dismissed accusation of “collusion with foreign powers.”
And this without the least play in the Holy See’s news outlets. Which also kept quiet about the convictions imposed on August 22 for “incitement to transgression” against two leaders of Hong Kong’s democratic opposition, Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan, both converts to Catholicism. Not to mention the silence over the definitive sentencing to 20 years in prison, last March 20, of Jimmy Lai, 79, he too a devout Catholic, the most famous and persecuted of the Hong Kong defenders of the freedoms wiped out by the regime.
“Vatican News,” the Holy See’s information portal, instead gave ample coverage in early August, with several reports, to the first formal dialogue between representatives of the Catholic Church – chaired by Cardinal George Jacob Koovakad, prefect of the dicastery for interreligious dialogue – and the thought of Confucius, held in Seoul, South Korea, on the theme : “The New Heaven, the New Earth, and Datong (Great Unity),” with the presence of exponents of Confucianism from twelve countries, including China.
The meeting ended with a joint statement. But without the slightest reference to today’s political use of Confucianism by the Beijing authorities, clearly identified instead by Gianni Criveller of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, a lifelong missionary in China and now director of the authoritative “Asia News” agency, in a September 9 editorial on the fiftieth anniversary of Mao Zedong’s death :
“Xi governs China not with Mao’s communist ideology, but with a nationalist ideology inspired by the instrumental adoption of Confucianism for political ends. […] Whilst Mao fought against Confucianism, which he accused of being the cause of China’s backwardness, Xi has made it the ideological core of his nationalism and his programme of Sinicisation.”
In the face of all this, one would expect a growing distrust in the world for a regime like that of Beijing, so oppressive not only of religious freedom but of all freedoms.
And yet no, the opposite is happening, according to a recent survey conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center in 36 countries around the world.
The research compares the percentages of the population in each country that express a favorable judgment on China and on the United States.
Well, only in nine countries – with Israel in the lead, followed by Japan, India, and in Europe, Poland – do favorable judgments on the United States outnumber those on China.
In all other countries, the opposite occurs. In Pakistan, favorable judgments on China are expressed by 90 percent of the population, against 15 percent on the United States. In Indonesia, 72 percent against 29, in Turkey 43 against 13, in Italy 51 against 31, in Spain 54 against 30, in the United Kingdom 46 against 41, in Germany 27 against 19, in France 36 against 27, in South Africa 52 against 35, in Nigeria 78 against 63, in Mexico 59 against 49, in Peru 61 against 51, in Canada 44 against 33, in Australia 31 against 24.
Of course, Donald Trump plays no small part in inspiring negative judgments on the United States. And in fact, in 2023 a similar study found that in many countries favorable judgments on the United States topped those on China. In Italy, for example, 60 percent of the population spoke favorably about the United States, against 36 percent about China.
But that notwithstanding, even narrowing the study to the degree of personal freedom guaranteed in the United States and in China, the changes in judgment, from 2023 to today, have almost everywhere rewarded China. In Italy, for example, those who say they are convinced that personal freedoms are today guaranteed in China have increased in the past three years from 9 to 15 percent of the population, while with regard to personal freedoms in the United States they have dropped from 64 to 39 percent.
(Translated by Matthew Sherry : traduttore@hotmail.com)
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Sandro Magister is past “vaticanista” of the Italian weekly L’Espresso.
The latest articles in English of his blog Settimo Cielo are on this page.
But the full archive of Settimo Cielo in English, from 2017 to today, is accessible.
As is the complete index of the blog www.chiesa, which preceded it.