Vatican hits stumbling block on road to rebuilding ties with China

Agreement reached in 2018 giving Pope veto over Chinese bishop appointments remains untested as renewal date looms

Both sides indicate they will extend pact despite persecution of Catholics and delays in appointing clergy

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Agreement reached in 2018 giving Pope veto over Chinese bishop appointments remains untested as renewal date looms. Illustration: SCMP Graphics

Published: 7:30am, 6 Jul 2020Updated: 6:52pm, 6 Jul 2020

This is the first in a three-part series examining the role of the Roman Catholic Church in China and how the difficult and complex relationship between the Vatican and Beijing has shifted and evolved since the Communist Party broke diplomatic ties in 1951. The first story investigates an agreement signed two years ago that suggested both sides seemed to be showing signs of compromise. What is at stake in this discussion and is there any potential for common ground between Pope Francis and President Xi Jinping?

When Beijing and the Vatican reached a provisional agreement in 2018 over who had the authority to appoint Roman Catholic bishops in China, it signalled a possible breakthrough in a troubled relationship stretching back six decades. It seems the signals were wrong.

Details of the pact – forged after more than three decades of negotiations – have never been made public, but the agreement marked the communist state’s first indication it was ready to share some authority with the Pope over control of China’s Catholic Church. It was hoped it would help in healing a rift from the 1940s when Beijing kicked the church out of China and later started an autonomous Catholic church, independent of Rome.

The schism directly affects around 12 million Catholics in China, who are roughly evenly split into a so-called underground church that looks to the Pope for authority, while others attend Sunday mass in state-run churches controlled by Beijing’s Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.

It is understood that Pope Francis has veto power over bishop candidates proposed by Beijing, but this has never been tested. Anthony Yao Shun was installed last August by Chinese authorities as bishop for Jining diocese in Inner Mongolia, but he was a bishop candidate chosen by the Vatican more than six years ago.

No new heads have been chosen for the 52 bishop-less dioceses in the two years since the agreement was signed, according to sources with knowledge of the negotiations, who declined to be named. “Bishop appointments were supposed to be the first obstacle to be resolved under the agreement, but while China and the Vatican have come closer, they are not interacting and conversing on the same bandwidth,” said one of the sources.

The 2018 provisional agreement expires in September, but Rome is reportedly ready to extend it by another two years, despite being unhappy with what it sees as a failure by Beijing to fulfil its part of the bargain.