On August 16, Human Rights Watch crossed a threshold that few international organizations had dared to cross with such clarity: in its annual report, the New York-based organization stated unequivocally that the provisional agreement between the Holy See and Beijing on the appointment of bishops "facilitates the repression" of Chinese Catholics who refuse to submit to the Patriotic Association. This was not a diplomatic nuance slipped in at the end of the report. This is a direct accusation, the most explicit that a major human rights organization has made since the renewal of the agreement in October 2024 for four more years, until 2028. And it comes as Leo XIV has, in the space of thirteen months of pontificate, validated five episcopal appointments under this same text — including the ordination of Bishop Giuseppe Chang Yanfeng in Chifeng on July 22, then that of Bishop Duan Yongkun in Bameng a few days later.
We must grasp the significance of what this report documents, without resorting to diplomatic abstraction. Since the signing of the agreement in September 2018 under Pope Francis, Chinese authorities have multiplied arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, and house arrests of bishops and priests of the so-called "underground" Church—the Church that has never broken communion with Rome but refuses the control of the Communist Party. Bishop Julius Jia Zhiguo, ninety years old, repeatedly detained since 1963, is a living embodiment of this. Bishop Pierre Shao Zhumin, of the diocese of Wenzhou, has been arrested at least six times since the signing of the agreement, the last time without any due process, and remains imprisoned to this day. These are not isolated cases relegated to the margins of an otherwise positive agreement: according to Human Rights Watch, this is the structural modus operandi that a diplomatic pact has unintentionally legitimized.
The agreement as an instrument, not as an intention
What the text never says
The most troubling paradox of this affair lies in its inherent opacity. No one, outside a small circle within the Secretariat of State, knows the full content of the agreement signed in 2018 and renewed without interruption in 2020, 2022, and then 2024. All that is known, from what the Holy See has chosen to disclose, is that Beijing proposes candidates for the episcopate and that the Pope retains a right of veto—a right that, notably, no pontiff has ever exercised, not even when the Chinese authorities made unilateral appointments during the vacancy of the Apostolic See in 2025, between the death of Francis and the election of Leo XIV. This absence of a veto is not a mere technical detail: it reveals that the balance of power, in practice, structurally favors Beijing, which chooses the candidates first, with Rome simply rubber-stamping the selection.
It is precisely this mechanism that Human Rights Watch denounces as facilitating repression. The argument is not that the Vatican desires the persecution of underground Catholics—no one seriously claims this—but that the agreement, by legitimizing the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association as the sole institutional interlocutor, effectively deprives underground communities of any recognized canonical existence. An underground bishop who refuses to join the Patriotic Association finds himself, from Beijing's perspective, an outlaw a second time: a civil outlaw, as he already was, but now also marginalized by a Roman Catholic Church that has chosen to engage with his persecutors rather than explicitly protect him.
Silence against the lamb
This dynamic finds a striking echo in the First Epistle of Peter, when the apostle writes to the scattered communities of Asia Minor: «Therefore, you who believe, this stone is to your honor, but to the unbelievers, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone» (1 Peter 2:7). This verse, addressed to minority Christians living under a power that does not recognize them, sheds a particular light on the situation of underground Chinese Catholics: in the eyes of the Party, they are the rejected stone, the administrative anomaly that must be absorbed through forced assimilation. But Peter does not promise them institutional protection—he promises them a dignity that escapes the calculations of the builders. This is a real spiritual consolation, but one that in no way absolves the visible Church of its pastoral responsibility toward those whom it has, in effect, left without diplomatic recourse.
Cardinal Joseph Zen, Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong and the most consistent opponent of the agreement since 2018, summarized this concern in terms that time has only confirmed: according to him, the agreement constitutes a "blank check" given to Beijing, a way for the Vatican to "help the Chinese government annihilate the underground Church that Beijing has not managed to crush" through coercion alone. In his nineties, he traveled to Rome in 2024 to try, in vain, to convince Francis not to renew the agreement for such a long period; the Pope refused to receive him, and the Curia publicly downplayed his warnings. This refusal to listen, documented and widely discussed, now carries new weight in light of the Human Rights Watch report: what the cardinal denounced as a pastoral intuition is now corroborated by a factual investigation into detentions, church demolitions, and enforced disappearances.
Leo XIV faced with a legacy he did not choose
Five bishops, a prolonged silence
What is striking, thirteen months after the election of Leo XIV, is the almost mechanical continuity of his China policy. The new pope has not renounced any of the direction laid out by Francis: he validated the appointment of Bishop Joseph Lin Yuntuan to Fuzhou, then consecrated Bishop Ignazio Wu Jianlin as auxiliary bishop of Shanghai, formalized the merger of the dioceses of Xuanhua and Xiwanzi into that of Zhangjiakou, before approving the ordinations of Bishop Chang Yanfeng to Chifeng and Bishop Duan Yongkun to Bameng. Five acts in one year, all carried out within the strict framework of the 2018 agreement. But what Vatican diplomacy presents as proof of pastoral fruitfulness—fifteen bishops appointed with Rome's approval since the signing of the agreement, putting an end to decades of unilateral Chinese appointments—Human Rights Watch interprets, on the contrary, as the gradual normalization of a system in which Rome cedes doctrinal ground in exchange for an appearance of peace.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, a constant architect of this diplomacy since his time as Secretary of State under Francis and then Leo XIV, had already argued in 2018 that the agreement marked, for the first time in decades, a renewed communion between all Chinese bishops and the Bishop of Rome. This is a defensible legal and sacramental interpretation: the visible unity of communion is, technically, something real. But the April 2026 report by Human Rights Watch, whose conclusions were reiterated and amplified by the annual report of August 16, emphasizes that this formal communion was built at the price of the forced integration of clandestine communities into the Patriotic Association, under the coercion of detention, disappearance, or house arrest for those who resisted. The contrast between the unity proclaimed in Rome and the documented coercion on the ground constitutes the heart of the disagreement.
Cautious silence: a strategy or an admission?
A year after his election, Leo XIV has still not publicly clarified his own doctrine on this inherited issue. This silence, which some observers close to the Vatican interpret as calculated diplomatic caution intended not to jeopardize the ongoing negotiations before the 2028 deadline, worries others who see it as an implicit admission of powerlessness in the face of a curial administration—that of Cardinal Parolin—which continues to hold sole control over the Chinese dossier. Meanwhile, Beijing sometimes openly ignores the very spirit of the agreement by installing bishops in unapproved dioceses, or by holding episcopal «elections» in Shanghai and Xinxiang during the vacancy of the apostolic see in 2025, in blatant violation of canon law, which forbids any episcopal appointment without a reigning pope.
This asymmetry deserves to be named bluntly: on the one hand, a Holy See that has never exercised its veto power, even in the face of blatant violations of the agreement; on the other, a Chinese government that treats the text as a flexible framework, adaptable to its interests at any given moment. It is this structural asymmetry that the Human Rights Watch report describes as enabling—not because the Vatican desires repression, but because its diplomatic silence, its reluctance to publicly denounce violations, and its insistence on celebrating each appointment as a pastoral victory, grant Beijing an international legitimacy it would not have achieved on its own. The Book of Lamentations, in a completely different context of exile and oppression, expresses this lament, which could be that of clandestine communities today: «She weeps in the night, and her tears cover her cheeks; among all her lovers, there is no one to comfort her» (Lamentations 1:2). What the underground Catholics of China are demanding is not consolation — it is recognition.
What the debate reveals about the governance of the Church
Does the theology of compromise have a limit?
The theological heart of this controversy extends far beyond the specific Chinese question: it challenges the very nature of pastoral governance when it encounters a totalitarian power. Throughout its history, the Church has practiced diplomatic compromise with hostile regimes—the concordat with the post-Constantinian Roman Empire, the negotiations with the communist regimes of Eastern Europe in the twentieth century, and the Vatican's Ostpolitik of Archbishop Agostino Casaroli under Paul VI. The latter offers a striking parallel: it too was criticized in its time for having sacrificed courageous bishops in the name of institutional survival negotiated with Moscow and its satellites. History has since partially absorbed these criticisms into a more nuanced judgment—but it has never erased the concrete suffering of the bishops imprisoned while Rome negotiated.
It is within this tension that the Sino-Vatican agreement is situated today, and it is this tension that the report of August 16th has once again brought to the forefront. The debate is not merely strategic—should one negotiate with a hostile regime to salvage what can be saved?—but fundamentally ecclesiological: what defines the unity of the Church when formal institutional communion coexists with the documented persecution of those who reject its terms? Saint Paul, writing to the Corinthians on the nature of the ecclesial body, offers an image that resonates strangely with this situation: «If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together» (1 Cor 12:26). This organic solidarity, constitutive of Catholic ecclesiology, seems to be put to the test by a diplomacy that celebrates the appointments validated in Rome while other members of the same body, in Wenzhou or Zhengding, suffer detention and house arrest in relative silence.
The test of truth through facts
What distinguishes the Human Rights Watch report from previous criticisms is precisely its systematic, factual rather than polemical approach: it is no longer simply the voice, however respected, of a retired cardinal, but a documented investigation into specific cases, specific dates, and specific locations—church demolitions, enforced disappearances, and coercive pressure on the faithful to join the Patriotic Association. This shift from internal theological criticism to external factual documentation changes the nature of the debate. It compels the Holy See to respond not to pastoral concerns, but to a body of evidence—and to date, the Secretariat of State has offered no detailed official response to these specific accusations.
This lack of public response, which has persisted since April 2016 when the initial report was published, and was repeated in August with the annual report, leaves a void that other voices are quick to fill—sometimes outrageously, sometimes with a rigor that deserves to be heard. Taiwan, whose authorities have been observing this Sino-Vatican rapprochement with constant concern since 2018, sees it as further confirmation that Beijing is instrumentalizing religious diplomacy in service of a broader strategy of international legitimation. The United States, engaged in a global strategic rivalry with China, also perceives this issue as an arena where religious freedom serves as a marker of broader geopolitical tensions—which, paradoxically, further complicates the Vatican's ability to respond without being itself instrumentalized by one side or the other.
What 2028 will have to decide
The agreement expires, in principle, in October 2028—unless it is renewed early according to the usual discreet renewal procedures. This deadline gives Leo XIV a relatively wide window to define his own doctrine, distinct from the legacy left by Francis and institutionally upheld by Cardinal Parolin. Nothing indicates, at this stage, that the current pontiff is considering a break: the five appointments validated in his thirteen months as pontiff, on the contrary, testify to a clear continuity. But the Human Rights Watch report introduces a new factor into this timeline—documented international pressure that will make it more difficult, as 2028 approaches, to renew the text without substantial public clarification of its content, its effective guarantees, and its actual impact on persecuted communities.
The prophet Isaiah, in an oracle addressed to a people tempted by opportunistic alliances with foreign powers, warns against placing excessive trust in political calculations at the expense of inner loyalty: «Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many!» (Isaiah 31:1). This is not an unequivocal condemnation of all diplomacy—Isaiah himself elsewhere acknowledges the legitimacy of prudent alliances—but a warning about the hierarchy of trusts: when political calculation becomes the ultimate measure of pastoral judgment, to the detriment of loyalty to the weakest members of the flock, something essential is lost, even if the initial intention remains the protection of the majority.
Lectio divina
«I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep» (John 10:11)
When you think of the imprisoned bishops of Wenzhou or Zhengding, what do you feel—anger, powerlessness, or a silence that mirrors that of Rome? You, who perhaps live your faith freely, never fearing for your freedom to go to Mass, can you truly grasp what it means to be a sheep scattered by a power that wants to forcibly integrate you into its flock? And what if true courage lay not in choosing between negotiation and rupture, but in refusing to let silence become a policy? What would you do if your bishop disappeared without trial and the world continued to celebrate the restored peace?
Lord, you, the good shepherd, know each of your sheep by name, even those who have been locked up, even those whose church has been razed. You never negotiate your presence; you give it entirely, even unto the cross. Look upon Wenzhou, look upon Zhengding, look upon those forced to choose between prison and imposed silence. Give your Church the strength to name without fear what wounds your little ones. May apparent peace never replace the truth that liberates. Hold fast to those who bear your chains today, as you held them yesterday.
An iron door ajar, and behind it, a lamp still burning.
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5 passages · 5 books
If I do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:2)
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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.
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He has given us a child, a son has been given to us. (Isaiah 9:5)
The great prophet of salvation: judgment, consolation and announcement of the Suffering Servant.
→ Explore the Isaiah Codex
God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. (John 3:16)
The Gospel of the Word: a profound theology of the Incarnation and the signs of Jesus.
→ Explore the Codex John- I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, and they will no longer be their prey (Ezekiel 34:1-11)
- I will give you shepherds after my own heart. All nations will converge on Jerusalem (Jeremiah 3:14-17)
- The Father and I are ONE (Jn 10:22-30)
- The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep (John 10:11-18)
- I am the gate for the sheep (John 10:1-10)
- Trinitarian love: when the Spirit liberates love from its own prison
- To be different in order to be free: the Christian, a happy stranger in a world that rejects him
- The joy that remains: when Jesus fulfills man's deepest desire
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- The broken heart of the earth: when swords also shape the ecological desert
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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
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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…
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Taiwan is home to a small Catholic community today, comprising approximately 0.3% of the population, within a society steeped in Buddhist-Taoist traditions and very open to religious diversity. Evangelization began in the 18th century…
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