In his first interview as pope, given in July to Elise Ann Allen of the American newspaper Crux and made public on September 18, Robert Francis Prevost was also asked about China.
And he responded that “in the short term” he will continue on the path undertaken by the Holy See for some years, but in the meantime he is already “trying to gain a clearer understanding of how the church can continue the church’s mission,” taking into account the culture and political issues “that have obviously great importance,” but also listening to “a significant group of Chinese Catholics who for many years have experienced some kind of oppression or difficulty in living their faith freely, and without choosing sides.”
“It’s a very difficult situation,” Pope Leo said. “In the long term, I don’t pretend to say this is what I will and will not do,” but “I’ve already begun having discussions at several levels on that topic.”
China is not a terra incognita for Leo. “He has visited China more than once and has learned about Chinese culture and reality,” Hong Kong bishop Cardinal Stephen Chow Sau-yan said of him shortly after his election as pope.
And back on May 25, at one of his first “Regina Caeli” in St. Peter’s Square, the new pope had asked for intercession that Chinese Catholics may have “the grace to be strong and joyful witnesses of the Gospel even in the midst of trials, to promote peace and harmony.”
What has happened from then until now confirms Leo’s prudent but far from resigned approach to the minefield that is the relationship between the Holy See and China.
A relationship in which Beijing unquestionably calls the shots, as also proved by the news given out in the interregnum between the death of Francis and the election of Leo.
It was April 28, and reliable sources told “AsiaNews,” the agency of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, that an assembly of priests, nuns, and laity obedient to the government had been convened in Shanghai to ratify the choice of a new auxiliary bishop in the person of Wu Jianlin, former vicar general of the diocese, as well as a member of the arch-official Chinese People’s Consultative Conference.
And the same thing happened in the diocese of Xinxiang, where the new bishop-designate was the priest Li Jianlin, he too a government pawn, to the point of having signed the ordinance in 2018 banning minors under 18 from entering churches for Mass in the whole province of Henan.
These two appointments leaked by the Chinese authorities had a serious anomaly in common. In Shanghai – where the head of the diocese, Bishop Joseph Shen Bin, who is also president of the Chinese pseudo episcopal conference never recognized by Rome, was installed in 2023 by a unilateral decision of the regime only afterward communicated to Pope Francis – there are already two auxiliary bishops, but both are barred from serving : Joseph Xing Wenzi, 62, ordained in 2005 but later fallen from grace and forced to retire to private life in 2011, and above all Thaddeus Ma Daqin, 57, who on July 7, 2012, during his episcopal ordination, revoked his membership in the government-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, with the immediate effect of being held under arrest since then in the Sheshan seminary.
Also in the diocese of Xinxiang there is already a bishop, he too under threat. He is Joseph Zhang Weizhu, 67, ordained clandestinely in 1991 and repeatedly arrested for the simple crime of carrying out his ministry, devoid as he is of official recognition.
Under the 2018 agreement between Beijing and the Holy See on the appointment of bishops, which is still secret but now clearly in operation, it is China that designates each new bishop, with the pope having the option of saying yes or no in the second round but who so far has in fact always approved each appointment.
A few months usually pass between the Chinese designation and the papal appointment. With the release, finally, on the day of the new bishop’s installation, of two different statements : one from the Holy See, citing the date of papal approval, and the other from the official Chinese Church agency, citing instead the date of the new bishop’s prior “election,” without the slightest mention of the pope.
In this case five months have gone by since the double news leaked on April 28, but nothing is yet known about the outcome of those two episcopal designations, in Shanghai and Xinxiang.
While in the meantime three more appointments have been finalized, in accordance with the agreement.
The first was on June 11, with the installation of Joseph Lin Yuntuan, 73, ordained bishop back in 2017 without publicity from the Vatican but now out of the underground and officially recognized as auxiliary bishop of the diocese of Fuzhou, where Joseph Cai Bingrui, he too released from underground status on that occasion, has been bishop since January of this year, the last episcopal appointment in China made by Pope Francis.
The other two between September 10 and 12, along with the erection of the new diocese of Zhangjiakou, its borders matching those of the relative province, and with the merging into it of the two previous dioceses of Xuanhua and Xiwanzi, now extinct.
This is not the first boundary adjustment for Chinese dioceses, to make them coincide with the provincial boundaries as desired by the Beijing authorities. Rome’s only firm reservation regarding the Chinese mapping, which considers all dioceses equal, is the distinction between diocese and archdiocese. In this case the Vatican statement defines the new diocese of Zhangjiakou as a “suffragan of Beijing,” implicitly attributing to this latter the status of an archdiocese at the head of an ecclesiastical province, and to its bishop the role of metropolitan.
The new bishop of Zhangjiakou, consecrated on September 10 at a ceremony presided over by his metropolitan of Beijing, Joseph Li Shan, is Joseph Wang Zhengui. The appointment by Pope Leo, according to the Vatican statement, took place on July 8, while his “election” by China, according to the statement from the official agency “Catholic Church in China,” dates back to March 28, when Francis was still pope.
Wang comes from the suppressed diocese of Xuanhua, whose underground bishop Augustine Cui Tai was repeatedly arrested but now, coinciding with the reorganization, has been retired and at the same time pardoned with official recognition.
And the same benefit of official recognition was granted by the Chinese authorities to the other bishop installed on September 12 as auxiliary in the new diocese of Zhangjiakou, Joseph Ma Yanen, until recently the underground bishop of the other suppressed diocese, that of Xiwanzi.
According to the statements from the Chinese, both the new auxiliary bishop of Zhangjiakou upon his installation and the bishop emeritus of Xuanhua on the day of his retirement had to solemnly swear to “respect the Constitution and the laws of the Country, safeguard national unity and social harmony, love homeland and Church, uphold the principle of the independence and self-government of the Church, adhere to the sinicization of Catholicism in China, and contribute to the complete construction of a modern socialist country and the comprehensive promotion of the great renewal of the Chinese nation.”
As for the diocese of Shanghai, where there remains pending the appointment of an auxiliary bishop already designated by the Chinese side – as leaked at the end of April – but not yet approved by Rome, the official news agency of the diocese, completely subjugated to the regime, gave wide publicity to the images of the clergy and faithful gathered in various places on September 3 to follow live on giant screens, with religious recollection as if they were in church, the gigantic military parade with which Xi Jinping wanted to celebrate the 80th anniversary of China’s “victory” in World War II.
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Regarding the oath of submission to the government attributed to the two bishops Ma Yanen and Cui Tai, “sources from ‘Asia News’ have reported the news as implausible,” agency director Fr. Gianni Criveller wrote on September 22 in a lucid commentary on what Pope Leo said about the future of relations between the Holy See and China. “The Catholic communities that looked up to them were taken by surprise and feel saddened. The two bishops, already underground, obeyed the will of the Holy See, but the story of their fidelity, together with that of their communities, emerges without recognition, if not mortified.”
(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.
