A cardinal who compared the Vatican’s concordat with China to a deal with Adolf Hitler has just been arrested. Yet Pope Francis does not seem to care.
The most senior Catholic cleric in China delivered a sobering warning five years ago. When news broke that the Vatican was negotiating a secret concordat to give the Chinese Communist Party a role in appointing Catholic bishops, Cardinal Joseph Zen warned that the deal would be “betraying Jesus Christ.”
“Maybe the pope is a little naive; he doesn’t have the background to know the Communists in China,” Zen told the Guardian Unlimited in November 2016. “You cannot go into negotiations with the mentality ‘we want to sign an agreement at any cost,’ then you are surrendering yourself, you are betraying yourself, you are betraying Jesus Christ. If you cannot get a good deal, an acceptable deal, then the Vatican should walk away and maybe try again later. Could the church negotiate with Hitler? Could it negotiate with Stalin? No.”
Seventy-five years after the Holocaust, the Vatican is turning a blind eye to an authoritarian regimes attempt to exterminate an ethnic minority.
That is the assessment of British human rights activist Benedict Rogers. In a July 29 Foreign Policy article, Rogers recounted how the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews wrote a letter to the Chinese ambassador in London, comparing the plight of the Uyghurs in Communist China to that of Jews in Nazi Germany. Children have been taken from their parents and sent to state-run orphanages. Women have been sterilized. And drone footage shows Uyghur men, kneeling and blindfolded, waiting to be loaded onto trains.
Twenty-three nations have condemned China’s human rights abuses. But the Vatican has remained surprisingly silent considering that Pope Francis is hailed as an advocate for the oppressed.
The pope has condemned the United States government for temporarily separating the children of illegal immigrants from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. And he has spoken out against the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a U.S. police officer, saying, “We cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form.” Yet when it comes to Communist China, he has turned a blind eye. He has not uttered a public prayer for the Uyghurs, the Hong Kongers, the Tibetans, the Falun Gong practitioners, or any other group persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party. Why?
According to Benedict Rogers, Pope Francis may not be allowed to criticize China’s treatment of the Uyghurs under the terms of a “secret concordat”between the Vatican and Beijing.
Two years ago, the Vatican asked Bishop Peter Zhuang Jianjian and Bishop Joseph Guo Xijin to step down and make way for two new bishops approved by the Chinese government. This was a prelude to a deal between the Roman Catholic Church and the Communist Party of China. The text of this deal remains secret, but we know it gives an avowedly atheist regime a direct role in appointing Catholic bishops. And it may mandate the pope’s silence on Communist human rights abuses.
Before this deal was signed, about half of China’s 10 to 12 million Catholics worshiped in underground churches that refuse to recognize Communist control over their faith. The other half worshiped in government-managed churches run by clergy appointed by the Communist Party of China. The deal was supposed to be a strategic compromise in the name of Catholic unity, but no Catholic clergy have been released from prison. Instead, several more have disappeared since the deal was signed.
The last British governor of Hong Kong is warning that the Vatican is making a mistake by cozying up to China just as it is slipping back into the most hard-line dictatorship since Mao Zedong. And retired Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen has said signing a deal with Communist China is analogous to signing a contract with Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin. Yet Vatican officials still plan on renewing their deal with China.
“The provisional agreement with China expires in September of this year and we must find a formula; we must see what to do,” Italian Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli said on an Italian television network. “We are trying to look toward the future, and we are trying to give to the future of our realizations a deep and respectful basis, and I would say that we are working in this sense.”
In summary: Pope Francis turns a blind eye to China’s egregious human rights abuses while praising Catholics who kneel at Black Lives Matter protests in the United States. This shows that human rights are not his primary concern. Instead, he is trying to accomplish a geopolitical goal.
Uki Goñi is an Argentine author whose research focuses on the Vatican’s historic role in organizing “ratlines” to help Nazi criminals escape to Argentina. In a 2015 editorialfor the New York Times, he wrote that you couldn’t understand Pope Francis without acknowledging that his worldview was shaped in Juan Peron’s Argentina. That is why Pope Francis often warns about the “excesses of capitalism” while expressing sympathy for communism and other forms of socialism. He ascribes to the sort of Catholic socialism that was practiced in Argentina during Juan Peron’s presidency.
“If you were to read one of the sermons of the first fathers of the church, from the second or third centuries, about how you should treat the poor, you’d say it was Maoist or Trotskyists,” Francis said in 2010 when he was still archbishop of Buenos Aires. So while the pope disagrees with China’s atheism, he seems more sympathetic to China’s Maoist economic system than he is to America’s free-market system. And this fact is key to understanding the geopolitical rationale behind the Vatican’s China deal.
Suppose Pope Francis wanted to defeat American capitalism. To do so, he would need to convince Catholic nations across Africa, Europe and Latin America to adopt a more socialist way of running their economies. And what better way to accomplish this than a deal with the world’s leading Communist economy? This deal with China is part of the Vatican’s long-term campaign to achieve full diplomatic relations with Beijing, a vital step toward restructuring the world economy.
Biblical passages such as Revelation 17 reveal that a powerful religious entity will rise in the end time and become the guiding force over a great economic powerhouse that intoxicates all nations with its wealth and splendor. Revelation 18:3 says, “For all the nations have drunkthe maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”Notice that these merchants are not only active in Europe and Latin America, they are merchants of the Earth doing business in all nations.
The religious entity referred to in Revelation 17 and 18 is headquartered in Rome. So atheist China is not going to lead the world’s new economic order. But atheist China will ally with a revived Holy Roman Empire to replace the current Anglo-American economic system.
The people of Rome once referred to the Chinese as the people of Cathay, after the Khitans on northern China. Both the Old Testament books of Isaiah and Ezekiel mention these people as Kittim. The Kittim form an end-time trade relationship with Tyre, which refers to the commercial heart of the Holy Roman Empire (Isaiah 23; Ezekiel 27).
Anyone concerned about the type of deals the pope is making with totalitarian dictatorships needs to understand the soon-coming alliance between “Catholic Europe”and “Communist China.”Both powers are prophesied to be instrumental in America’s downfall!
The Holy See admits that “extremely painful situations” are not solved, but claims it is too early to assess the effects of the deal.
With a short press release, the Vatican informed that the secret agreement with China was renewed the same day it expired, October 22, 2020, for an additional period of two years.
A comment appeared in the Vatican daily “L’Osservatore Romano,” claiming it is too early to assess the long-term effects of the deal, and that the COVID-19 crisis paralyzed several local and national situations.
The article mentioned the opposition by “some sector of international politics,” alluding to the United States, and answered that the agreement is religious rather than political.
The Holy See, it said, regards the fact that today in China there are no longer “schismatic” bishops, as all the bishops of the Catholic Patriotic Association are in communion with the Pope, as a religiously significant result.
The text also acknowledges that “extremely painful situations” remain among Chinese Catholics, that the Chinese government should “guarantee a better exercise of religious liberty,” and that the path that may lead to real progress risks to be “long and difficult.”
It is an allusion to the conscientious objectors who refuse to join the “Catholic Patriotic Association.” While not encouraging them, the Vatican stated in 2019that they should be “respected.” Instead, they are harassed and jailed.
The text of the agreement remains secret.
The former bishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Joseph Zen, has labeled the Vatican’s extended deal with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) a “complete defeat” for faithful Catholics.
“With the protection of this agreement, the government forced the people from the underground to join the Patriotic Association… which is objectively schismatic,” Cardinal Joseph Zen told AFP this week, adding that the underground community has “practically disappeared” as a result. “That’s not victory, that’s a defeat — complete defeat,” Cardinal Zen said.
On Thursday, the Holy See Press Office announced the renewal of the 2018 Sino-Vatican agreement on the appointment of bishops for another two years, citing its “great ecclesial and pastoral value.”
Earlier this year, Cardinal Zen declared that while the Vatican seeks compromise with the CCP, they want “complete surrender.” In his ongoing criticism of the Vatican’s rapprochement with the CCP, Zen has insisted that Pope Francis is “naïve” in dealing with a country about which he knows little.
“The pope doesn’t know much about China. And he may have some sympathy for the Communists, because in South America, the Communists are good guys, they suffer for social justice,” Zen told the Catholic News Agency (CNA). “But not the Chinese Communists. They are persecutors.”
“So the situation is, humanly speaking, hopeless for the Catholic Church: Because we can always expect the Communists to persecute the Church, but now [faithful Catholics] don’t get any help from the Vatican,” he said.
“The Vatican is helping the government, surrendering, giving everything into their hands,” Zen said. Last December, Zen saidthat the pope’s policies in dealing with the CCP are “killing” the underground Church in that country.
“Unfortunately, my experience of my contact with the Vatican is simply disastrous,” the cardinal said, noting his particular distress over the Vatican’s deal with Beijing.
“A secret agreement, being so secret you can’t say anything,” Zen said of the deal. “We don’t know what is in it. Then the legitimization of the seven excommunicated bishops. That’s incredible, simply incredible.”
“But even more incredible is the last act: the killing of the underground,” he said.
Cardinal Joseph Zen, former bishop of Hong Kong, has renewed his criticism of the “Sino-Vatican Deal” warning that he thinks Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin is exercising “undue influence” in advising Pope Francis.
Cardinal Joseph Zen, former bishop of Hong Kong.
“Now I’m sorry to say that I think you can agree that Pope Francis has low respect for his predecessors. He is shutting down everything done by John Paul II and by Pope Benedict,” Zen said, adding that Vatican officials always describe these actions as being “in continuity” with previous popes, but he considers this description to be “an insult” and obviously false.
“I have a clear impression that Parolin is manipulating the Holy Father,” Zen told New Bloom Magazine in a recent interview.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
Zen said Parolin’s motives are unclear, but suggested that he may be acting out of “vainglory” and a desire for “diplomatic success.”
“It’s a real mystery how a man of the Church, given all his knowledge of China, of the Communists, could do such a thing as he’s doing now,” he said.
For decades, the Church in China had been split between the “underground” Church, in full communion with Rome, and the state-run “Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association” (CPCA), which was not. The communist government appointed bishops for the CPCA.
In September 2018, news was released of a “provisional” agreement between Beijing and Vatican officials, intended to “unify” the underground Church and the CPCA.
While the terms of the agreement have been kept “confidential” it reportedly allows the CPCA to choose a “slate of nominees” for bishop, from which the pope would then select in making his appointment.
Zen has been an outspoken critic of the agreement, calling it an act of “shameless surrender” to the communist government.
The cardinal has criticized the deal’s “secrecy”, noting that as one of two Chinese cardinals, he has been unable to “see the contents” of the agreement, and that documents released from the Holy See have been “vague” without any name or department attached to them, in a departure from the usual protocol.
Zen has also warned that the deal will put those who have remained loyal to Rome in the underground Church in danger, as pressure mounts to accept the authority of the CPCA.
Guidance from the Vatican recognizes the choice of those who feel that they cannot in good conscience register with the government and accept the communist policy of “sinicization,” to bring the Catholic Church more in-line with the communist understanding of Chinese culture, society, and politics.
However, reports indicate that those who decline to register are facing “harassment and persecution.”
Last month, Bishop Vincenzo Guo Xijin, a leader in the Chinese underground Church, “refused” to register with the government. He promptly was placed under the supervision of two “state security officials” and visited daily in an attempt to force him to sign an “act of registration” with the state. He escaped a few days later and is reportedly in hiding.
Underground Church refusing to register with state.
Speaking with New Bloom, Cardinal Zen outlined his experience of a shift in the Vatican’s approach to China over recent decades.
In the 1980s, Cardinal Jozef Tomko, then-prefect of the “Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples” invited Zen to take part in a series of quiet “Vatican”meetings about China.
These meetings, Zen said, allowed experts and bishops from different parts of China to offer a “report” on their situation to the Vatican Secretary of State and Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
Zen praised Tomko, saying that both his vast experience in the Vatican and his knowledge of life under “communism” in his home country of Czechoslovakia gave him a good perspective on the situation of China.
Informed by Tomko, he said, the Holy See legitimized several “illegitimate” bishops who asked for pardon, recognizing that they were “good people” who had been timid and were pressured by the government into “accepting illegitimate ordination.”
But when Tomko retired, Zen said, his successors moved the discussion around China in a different direction. He accused Vatican officials of “manipulating” the Chinese translation of a text written by Pope Benedict XVI to the Church in China, and rendering a commission established by Pope Benedict ineffective.
In particular, he named Ivan Dias, who served as prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, and Cardinal Parolin, then-Undersecretary of State, as driving figures in the new approach.
Zen said he no longer had a “voice”in the Vatican discussions, and felt that the Pope was no longer “hearing”from those on the ground about their situation. In 2010, he said, rumors began to arise that an agreement between the “Vatican and China”was in the works. But several years later, no agreement had surfaced.
“I have no evidence, but I believe that it was Pope Benedict who said no,” Zen said. “He could not sign that agreement. And I think the one agreement signed now by Pope Francis must be exactly that one, which Pope Benedict refused to sign.”
Then, in 2013, Pope Francis was elected. While Zen said his personal relationship with Pope Francis is “amicable” he added that the pope has not addressed the “concerns”he has repeatedly raised regarding the “China Deal” that was struck in 2018.
Earlier this year, Zen traveled to Rome, where he “requested”a meeting with Pope Francis. He said his first request went “unanswered”, and he sent a second request, which was met with the “instruction” to speak with Cardinal Parolin. Zen declined, and was subsequently “invited” to have dinner with both Parolin and Pope Francis.
“I went there to the supper. Very simple, the three of us. I thought supper is not a time to quarrel, so I had to be kind during supper,” Zen said. “So I talked all about Hong Kong, and Parolin didn’t say a word. So at the end, I said, ‘Holy Father, what about my objections to that document?’ He said, ‘Oh, oh, I’m going to look into the matter.’ He saw me off at the door.”
Zen said he was left with the distinct “impression” that Parolin is “manipulating” Pope Francis. He is concerned that the Pope is “legitimizing the schismatic church in China” and that those who have faced years of “persecution” as members of the underground Church are now left “confused and unsure” about what to do.
“Priests are being asked to sign a document supporting the government-run church in order to minister openly”, he warned. The Communist Party will not “tolerate” the Catholic Church unless it feels that it can “control” the Church, Zen said.
“They need to control everything. Since they know that they cannot destroy, they want to control. Obviously. All the churches. They want to destroy from within.”
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