The agreement was first signed in September 2018 and renewed for another two years in October 2020. It remains unclear what the pope has granted and how the process is applied in practice, as the deal, like the negotiations, has remained secret.
After the China deal was signed in 2018, state officials in different regions of China removed crosses and demolished church buildings, and underground Catholics and clergy have reported harassment and detention.
Xi has been harshly criticized for overseeing the persecution of religious believers of many stripes in China, including Christians and the Uyghurs. While introducing more restrictive rules on religious practice, Xi has been outspoken about his goal of infusing “religious theories with Chinese character” into the five official religions supervised by the government, including the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.
“I just can’t imagine what’s going on now is worth that in the future,” Schneck said. “In fact, I would go as far as to say, this is my personal comment, but it looks to me that China may in fact be using this agreement to crack down further on underground Catholics in China, and if that’s the situation, then the Vatican’s actually losing ground with China, and not gaining ground at all.”
Schneck highlighted the high-profile arrests in recent years of Catholics such as Cardinal Joseph Zen.
Zen, 90, the emeritus bishop of Hong Kong, has been an outspoken critic of the Vatican’s China deal. The cardinal was along with several others arrested in May along with other democracy activists under Hong Kong’s national security law. He is standing trial for failing properly to register a fund to provide legal aid to pro-democracy protesters.
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