- A Church that moves forward on two legs
- The mechanism of the provisional agreement and its slow implementation
- The theological prize of official recognition
- The people who consecrate in the shadows
- What Scripture says about the rejected stone that becomes the cornerstone
- The future of an agreement hinges on his own discretion
- A diplomacy of silence that questions the Catholic conscience
- A universal Church called to fraternal vigilance
- Lectio divina
- ✝ Biblical references
On August 31, in the Catholic church of Pingcheng district in Datong, approximately two hundred priests, nuns, and faithful witnessed the laying on of hands of Bishop Paolo Liu Honggang, now Bishop of the Diocese of Shanxi, twenty-one years after the death of its last incumbent. That same day, hundreds of kilometers away in Fujian province, other hands had already been laid, in secret, on the heads of at least ten other men who had become bishops, without any cameras, any Holy See press releases, or any official photographs capturing the events. Two consecrations, the same sacrament, two faces of the Church in China: one visible and negotiated, the other invisible and clandestine. It is this coexistence, both troubling and theologically fruitful, that deserves to be scrutinized in the light of faith, not as a diplomatic incident, but as a sign of the times that the Church has been going through for centuries whenever temporal power has wanted to interfere in the transmission of the sacred.
A Church that moves forward on two legs
The mechanism of the provisional agreement and its slow implementation
The trajectory of Bishop Liu Honggang illustrates with almost bureaucratic precision the mechanism established since 2018 between the Holy See and the People's Republic of China. Elected by his local community on April 28, 2026, his candidacy was approved by Pope Leo XIV, who appointed him on August 10, before his consecration on August 31, presided over by Bishop Joseph Shen Bin of Shanghai, President of the Chinese Bishops' Conference. This succession of steps is not insignificant: it gives substance, month after month, to a provisional agreement signed during the pontificate of Pope Francis, renewed for four more years in 2024, and whose full content has never been made public, nor even communicated to the Chinese cardinal who nevertheless sits on the College of Cardinals.
With the consecration of Datong, seventeen Chinese Catholic bishops have now been ordained through this mechanism since 2018, and the third in just three months under the pontificate of Leo XIV. This rapid pace contrasts sharply with the more than two decades the Diocese of Datong waited for before receiving a new bishop: since the death of its previous bishop, the see had remained vacant for twenty-one years, an entire generation of Catholics growing up without an episcopal figure recognized by Rome. This contrast between the structural wait and the recent acceleration reveals something essential about the very nature of pastoral ministry: it is not negotiated like a commercial contract, but rather received over time, often in the painful patience of absence.
The theological prize of official recognition
What is striking about Bishop Liu Honggang is that he is a man of the official Chinese ecclesiastical system—ordained a priest for the Diocese of Datong in 1996, having long served as a diocesan administrator recognized by the civil authorities—but whose episcopal appointment was validated by the successor of Peter according to the canons of the Catholic Church. This dual affiliation is not an anomaly: it is precisely the structure intended by the provisional agreement, which stipulates that the civil authorities propose candidates and that the Pope makes the final decision on their appointment.
But this system has suffered serious setbacks in the recent past. In 2022 and 2023, two episcopal transfers—that of Bishop Peng Weizhao to Jiangxi and that of Bishop Shen Bin himself to Shanghai—were decided solely by the Chinese authorities, without the prior approval of Pope Francis, in flagrant violation of the terms of the agreement. The fact that the bishop presiding over the consecration of Datong today is precisely the one whose appointment, a few years earlier, bypassed Rome, illustrates the structural fragility of this balance: the agreement functions, but it remains dependent on the goodwill of a power that has already shown it can disregard it when it suits its purposes.
The people who consecrate in the shadows
The testimony of an unnamed bishop
It is in this context that we must understand the testimony gathered by historian Anthony E. Clark from a Chinese Catholic bishop who voluntarily remained outside the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, a state-controlled organization to which the agreement does not formally require membership, but whose de facto influence extends into the daily life of the dioceses. According to this prelate, whose name, dates of consecration, and the identities of the consecrating bishops have not been revealed, Fujian province in southeastern China has become a veritable "state of emergency" for communities that refuse official registration.
His description is striking: «at least ten new bishops» have reportedly been secretly consecrated there since 2018, not as a gratuitous challenge to Rome, but to «ensure the survival of the Church in China» in the face of increasingly intrusive political control. He does not specify whether these consecrations benefited from a secret papal mandate—a practice that would not be unprecedented in the history of the Chinese Church, where Rome has sometimes discreetly authorized ordinations to avoid leaving the underground Church without pastors. The absence of names and documents makes any independent verification impossible; but the very existence of this testimony, gathered and disseminated while the Vatican publicly celebrates its ninth episcopal appointment under Leo XIV, implicitly reveals a two-tiered Church, where civil recognition and loyalty to Rome no longer necessarily coincide.
An old rift reactivated by the agreement
This division is not new: it has run through Chinese Catholicism since the diplomatic rupture of the 1950s. What is new is how the 2018 agreement, intended to unify the two communities—the so-called «official» and the so-called «underground»—has paradoxically reignited tensions in certain provinces. Cardinal Joseph Zen, Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong and the most uncompromising figure of the Catholic resistance against Beijing, has consistently denounced since 2018 what he calls the risk of the ’annihilation of the true Church,« asserting in a now-famous op-ed that the Pope did not understand China. He later described the text of the agreement as a »masterpiece of creativity« consisting of »saying nothing with so many words,« denouncing the secrecy maintained even from the Chinese cardinals themselves.
Facing him, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re defended the agreement as "the only possible one" under the given circumstances, arguing that the alternative—a complete absence of dialogue—would have left Chinese Catholics without any institutional protection. This opposition between two cardinals, one who experienced persecution firsthand, the other who negotiated from the Roman Curia, is not simply a disagreement over foreign policy: it raises the theological question of where, concretely, apostolic continuity lies when a secular power arrogates to itself the right to oversee the appointment of pastors.
What Scripture says about the rejected stone that becomes the cornerstone
Spiritual building through living and hidden stones
This Chinese situation, with its bishops ordained in the public eye and those consecrated in secrecy, finds a striking echo in the exhortation of the Apostle Peter, himself the first Bishop of Rome and the first martyr of the papacy: «You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood» (1 Peter 2:4-5). What Peter describes here is not a visible architecture, celebrated by official inaugurations, but a continuous construction, often invisible to the world, where each stone—every baptized person, every priest, every bishop, whether recognized by civil authorities or consecrated in the secrecy of a chapel in Fujian—finds its place in a structure whose complete plan only God knows.
There is a profound truth in rereading this passage today: the stone the builders rejected can become the cornerstone (1 Peter 2:7), and the history of the Chinese Church has consistently demonstrated for decades that spiritual fruitfulness is not measured by official recognition. The bishops consecrated secretly in Fujian receive no photographs on the website of the Chinese Bishops' Conference, no press release from the Holy See; and yet, if their consecration is validated by apostolic succession—with or without an explicit papal mandate—they carry within them the same pastoral responsibility as that received by Bishop Liu Honggang before two hundred faithful in Pingcheng.
Waiting and loyalty in the ordeal of silence
The Book of Lamentations also offers a key to understanding the long vacancy of the See of Datong and the waiting of the clandestine communities: «It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord» (Lam 3:26). Twenty-one years without a recognized bishop is not an administrative void, but a spiritual ordeal experienced by entire families, catechists, and nuns who continued to transmit the faith without the regularly available sacrament of confirmation, without the constant presence of a mitred pastor. This same patience, transformed into a constant tension, now inhabits the communities of Fujian who choose clandestinity rather than waiting for recognition that does not come, or that comes at the price of control they deem incompatible with the integrity of the faith.
We must avoid any binary interpretation that would oppose "good" clandestine bishops to "bad" official bishops, or vice versa. The history of the papacy itself has known periods when canonical legitimacy and political recognition did not coincide, without this dissolving the substantial unity of the Church. The nascent council of Christian conscience in the face of these events must remember that Christ promised to be present "in the midst" of those who gather in his name (Mt 18:20), whether they are gathered in an officially recognized church or in a private home in Fujian, hidden from view.
The future of an agreement hinges on his own discretion
A diplomacy of silence that questions the Catholic conscience
One of the most troubling aspects of this situation remains the confidential nature of the agreement itself. Renewed continuously since 2018—in 2020, 2022, and then for four years in 2024—this text has never been published in its entirety, neither by the Holy See nor by Beijing. This opacity, which Leo XIV chose to maintain by continuing the course set by his predecessor, raises a question of ecclesiastical governance: how can the faithful, Chinese or otherwise, judge the fairness of a framework whose exact terms and precise mechanisms for selecting candidates they do not know?
The pace observed since the election of Leo XIV—three episcopal appointments in three months, following a cautious start to his pontificate—suggests a desire to give visible and reassuring continuity to this discreet diplomacy. Each appointment scrupulously follows protocol: local election, papal approval, then public consecration with the participation of neighboring bishops already recognized. This is a clear signal sent to Beijing as well as to Catholics worldwide: the channel of dialogue remains open and functional, and the Pope retains, at least formally, the final say on each appointment.
A universal Church called to fraternal vigilance
But this institutional continuity must not numb the vigilance required by the situation of underground communities. The Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians on the unity of the Church, reminds us that «if one member suffers, all suffer together» (1 Cor 12:26)—a principle that applies with particular urgency to a global Church too often tempted to consider the Chinese question as a mere matter of Vatican foreign policy, far removed from the daily concerns of parishes in Europe or America. The media silence surrounding the ten bishops of Fujian, compared to the official coverage given to the consecration in Datong, illustrates this asymmetry of attention that Catholics worldwide are called to correct through prayer and information.
It is incumbent upon every baptized person, regardless of their country, to carry in their intercession these two faces of the Chinese Church: the one that advances, step by step, within the fragile framework of a diplomatic agreement which it hopes will permanently protect its communion with Rome, and the one that, refusing any compromise with the state apparatus, chooses risk and secrecy to preserve intact, in its own words, «the integrity of the Catholic faith.» Both communities, in the final analysis, profess the same Creed, receive the same Eucharist, and await the same Kingdom—even if history, for the moment, keeps them separated by walls that only God’s patience seems capable of one day tearing down.
📁 Special Report
Leo XIV1323 articles
Leo XIV, the first American pope, facing AI and digital technology: profile, social legacy of Leo XIII and challenges…
Access the folder →Lectio divina
«You too, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood.» 1 Peter 2:5
You look at an official photograph: two hundred faithful, a mitred bishop, everything is in order, and yet you know that elsewhere, in the shadows, ten other men bear the same burden without any image revealing them. Where do you, the living stone, place yourself when the world's recognition is silent about you? Can you believe that God also builds with what no one sees? What, in your own life of faith, remains invisible and yet essential to the edifice?.
Lord, you build with stones that no architect in the world would choose. You lay your hand upon heads that cameras ignore. Teach me to see your temple where there is neither press release nor photograph. Grant to the hidden bishops of Fujian the silent strength of those who serve you without human witnesses. Grant to Bishop Liu Honggang the fidelity that endures twenty-one years of silence. May your Church, visible and hidden, always be but one spiritual home.
A hand placed on a forehead, in a windowless room, at the same hour as the bells of a well-known church ring.
✝ Biblical references
4 passages · 4 books
If I do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:2)
Unity of the Church, ethical problems and a hymn to charity for the Corinthian community.
→ Explore the Codex 1 Corinthians- When the Church becomes a collection: the offering of the Uruguayan people before the arrival of Peter
- Jerusalem, back to school without classes: when the Church becomes the last living stone
- When fever overrides prayer: Congo faces an epidemic that defies all remedies
- Nepal underwater: when the minority church becomes a sacrament of charity
Cast all your anxieties on him, for you are precious in his eyes. (1 Peter 5:7)
Encouragement to persecuted Christians: hope, baptism and conduct in society.
→ Explore Codex 1 Stone- Leo XIV and Padre Pio's hospital: when Peter's successor became guardian of the poor
- Torreciudad: When a Virgin becomes a hostage in a church conflict
- When the Church becomes a collection: the offering of the Uruguayan people before the arrival of Peter
- Ceferino Namuncurá, or the holiness that cannot be expelled
The grace of the Lord never ceases, his compassions never come to an end. (Lam 3:22)
Five poems of mourning on the ruin of Jerusalem and hope in divine mercy.
→ Explore the Lamentations Codex- When the earth collapses: Nepal and the silence inhabited by God
- Lourdes, an open wound: what France is preparing to show the Pope
- Lebanon, land of resurrection: when the law finally renounces killing as punishment
- China: Behind the Sino-Vatican agreement, the silent prison of Archbishop Zhang Weizhu
Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:20)
The Gospel of the King: Jesus, the new Moses, fulfills the Scriptures for Israel and the nations.
→ Explore the Matthew Codex- I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven (Mt 16:13-20)
- I do not tell you to forgive seven times, but seventy times seven (Mt 18:21 – 19:1)
- If he listens to you, you have won your brother over (Mt 18:15-20)
- Beware of despising one of these little ones (Mt 18:1-5, 10, 12-14)
- This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister (Mt 18:21-35)
- Seeing one's own debt in order to dare to forgive that of the other
- Correcting a brother without judging him: the lesson of John Chrysostom
- Reaching out to others before it's too late: fraternity according to Matthew
- Coming down to reign: what Jesus does with a child in the middle
- «"I need you, Lord!" — The cry of the soul that God was waiting for
🌍 2 countries involved
With approximately 0.7 million Catholics in a population of 1.4 billion, China is nonetheless home to one of the world's largest absolute Catholic communities, estimated at nearly ten million faithful. Evangelization…
Discover China →
In the Vatican, the population is almost entirely Catholic, since this microstate exists in direct service to the universal Church. The Christian presence there dates back to the 1st century with the martyrdom and burial of Saint Peter…
Discover Vatican City →
