On October 22, 2024, as is known, an extension of four more years was applied to the provisional agreement between the Holy See and China on the appointment of bishops, signed in 2018 and already extended twice in 2020 and 2022. An agreement that, however, continues to remain secret in its formulation and procedure, which is all to the advantage of the Beijing authorities.
In fact, if one just analyzes how Beijing and Rome give word of each new appointment, it is easy to note significant elements of difference, in the first place the total silence on the Chinese side regarding the pope and the role he plays, as if he did not even exist.
Just in recent days two more bishops have been installed in China. And it is instructive to compare the statements issued by the two sides.
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Regarding the new bishop of Luliang, Anthony Ji Weizhong, 52, ordained on January 20, the Vatican bulletin published on the same day relates that his appointment was made by the pope on October 28, 2024.
But the contemporaneous press release issued by the official website in Mandarin of the “Catholic Church in China” is silent on the papal appointment, and relates instead that Ji “was elected bishop on July 19, 2024.” As if to say, reading the two press releases together, that it took more than three months for Rome to digest the appointment decided on unilaterally by Beijing.
The Chinese statement does not specify by whom and how the new bishop was elected. But it does cite, as usual, a “letter of approval” from the Chinese episcopal conference, a spurious body never recognized by the Holy See but only by the Beijing authorities. And it provides a detailed list – which the Vatican bulletin omits – of the bishops who took part in the ordination ceremony, with their respective roles in the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, the regime’s main organ of control over the Church, which is also the true proprietor of the website of the “Catholic Church in China.”
As for the new bishop’s “curriculum vitae,” both the Vatican bulletin and the Chinese press release highlight his studies at the theological institute in Sankt Augustin, Germany. To which the Chinese press release adds the earning of “a master’s degree in theology in the United States.”
Moreover, the Vatican bulletin – but not the Chinese press release – relates that on October 28, 2024, the same day as the appointment of the new bishop, the pope also proceeded with the erection of the new diocese of Luliang, with a precise description of its geographical extension, and with the suppression of the previous diocese of Fenyang, established by Pius XII in 1948.
Several times before, after the signing of the agreement in 2018, the Holy See has had to redraw the borders of one or another Chinese diocese, matching them to the administrative borders as the Beijing authorities would have them. The final result will be the reduction of the number of dioceses from 135, as in the old Vatican mapping, to just under a hundred, about a third of which are still without a bishop, roughly as they were seven years ago before the signing of the agreement.
In the Vatican bulletin, moreover, the new diocese of Luliang is defined as “suffragan of Taiyuan,” but without specifying that the latter is the archdiocese that it is under. This too in obedience to the Beijing regime, according to which archdioceses and archbishops no longer exist, but dioceses and bishops must all be considered equal.
Taiyuan, in the province of Shanxi, was the scene of a massacre of Christians in the early twentieth century, during the Boxer Rebellion, and in 2000 John Paul II canonized 119 of those martyrs.
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More concise is the Vatican bulletin of January 23 on the transfer from the diocese of Xiamen to that of Fuzhou, capital of the province of Fujian, of Bishop Joseph Cai Bingrui (in the photo), 59, assigned by the pope to his new see a few days before, on January 15.
The contemporaneous Chinese press release is silent, as always, on the act carried out by the pope, canonically the only one that counts, and instead cites the letter of approval from the Chinese episcopal conference.
It dwells at length on the bishops who participated in Cai’s entering into possession of his new diocese, emphasizing each one’s roles in the Patriotic Association and other government bodies.
But above all it gives an account of the promises of full submission to the regime made by the new bishop of Fuzhou at his installation ceremony:
“Bishop Cai Bingrui said that he will always hold high the banner of patriotism and of love for the Church, will adhere to the principle of independence and self-management, will adhere to the direction of the sinicization of Catholicism in our country, will unite and lead the priests and faithful of the diocese of Fuzhou in keeping to a path compatible with socialist society.”
The reason for the emphasis given to these promises of submission is linked to the pugnacious opposition of a large part of the faithful and clergy of Fuzhou to the previous bishop, Peter Lin Jiashan, who died at the age of 88 in April 2023, accused of being too subordinate to the regime. What the new bishop has been made to say sounds like a call to order, addressed to the clergy and faithful.
Fuzhou, on the coast facing the island of Taiwan, is the historical cradle of Christianity in China, from the time of Matteo Ricci. Today it numbers more than 300 thousand Catholics, with a hundred priests and half a thousand nuns, and is properly an archdiocese, a qualification however on which the Holy See now keeps quiet, just as it does on that of archbishop for its new head, as demanded by the Chinese authorities.
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Shortly after the latest extension of the agreement between Rome and Beijing, a third appointment of undoubted importance also went into effect: that of the coadjutor bishop of Beijing, Matthew Zhen Xuebin, 55, made public on the day of his episcopal ordination, October 25, 2024.
The Vatican bulletin gives the date of August 28, 2024, for his appointment by the pope, left out altogether, as always, in the Chinese press release, which instead backdates his “election” in China, with the inevitable letter of approval from the episcopal conference, to March 21, 2024, a good five months before Francis – the Vatican bulletin says – “approved his candidacy.”
Those who took part in Zhen’s episcopal ordination, as related by the press release from the “Catholic Church in China,” were the reigning bishop of Beijing, Joseph Li Shan, and four other bishops.
In the biography of the new bishop, the Chinese press release highlights that he has been the secretary general of the diocese of Beijing since 2007 and previously the vice-rector of the philosophical and theological seminary of the same diocese.
But it is silent on the fact that Zhen obtained a licentiate in liturgy after five years of studies in the United States at St. John’s University, from 1993 to 1997, as the Vatican bulletin instead notes. He speaks English, which could be useful to him in international contacts.
The most surprising element of Zhen’s appointment is that Li Shan, the bishop of Beijing in office, is 60 years old, just five years older than he. The “coadjutor,” in fact, is an auxiliary bishop with the guarantee of succession as head of the same diocese, and this role is usually assigned when the incumbent is old or ill and the transfer of office is thought to be imminent.
But Li is also president of the Patriotic Association and vice-president of the episcopal conference, and according to some sources it was he himself who asked to be appointed coadjutor to Zhen, having been for some time his close associate in heading the diocese (it too properly an archdiocese, but no longer qualified as such even by the Holy See).
The fact is that this appointment secures the diocese of China’s political capital for years, if not decades, in the hands of two staunch supporters of the regime.
Just like the diocese of the economic capital, Shanghai, where in 2023 the communist regime installed, on April 4, one of the bishops most assimilated into the party, Joseph Shen Bin, 55, without even giving due notice to the Holy See, which reacted with a declaration of protest but three months later, on July 15, had to swallow the affront with the pope’s signature on the act of appointment.
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One last observation. The bishops charged each time with carrying out episcopal ordinations and supervising diocesan installations are evidently chosen by the Chinese authorities without any coordination with Rome, which in fact never reports their names. And the priests, nuns, and faithful admitted to these rites are also carefully selected.
And woe to anyone who disregards the program of the ceremony, as happened in 2012 at the cathedral of Shanghai, when the new bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin, just ordained, dissociated himself from the Patriotic Association to reaffirm his full fidelity to the Church of Rome, and for this was arrested and confined to the seminary of Sheshan, where he still lives without any role, despite the public act of submission to the regime that he signed in 2015.
In short, from a synoptic reading of the press releases issued by the Holy See and the “Catholic Church in China” with each new episcopal appointment, it is clear that the one running the game is the regime in Beijing.
So it comes as no surprise that the secret agreement signed by the Vatican should be the object of harsh criticism, or at least of well-argued and documented critical analyses like these by Gianni Criveller of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions:
> Four more years of trust “for the good of the Church and the Chinese people” (10.23.2024)
> Beijing and the Holy See: Positive signs tempered by heavy silence (2.12.2024)
(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.
