As Taiwan honoured Pope John Paul I on September 4, the Vatican continues to cosy up to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) whose brutality at home and abroad threatens not only Taiwan – an island democracy the CCP views as a renegade province – but religious and ethnic minorities within the country. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen sent a special envoy to attend the beatification ceremony as a signal of the bond between Taiwan and the Holy See (Vatican City State remains the only European country to recognise Taiwan as an independent country).
Former Vice President Chen Chien-jen – himself a Catholic – attended the ceremony, and attended a reception with Francis, where he asked the Pope to “pray for Taiwan”. Chen has previously visited the Vatican in 2016, 2018 and 2019, including attending the canonisation of Mother Teresa. Taiwan is between 1.5 and 2 per cent Catholic, with many Taiwanese Catholics having fled from persecution in mainland China. The Catholic Church also runs healthcare and educational establishments in Taiwan, including Fu Jen Catholic University. Given all of this, the continuation of the Vatican-CCP deal feels like an enormous slap in the fact.
Through the deal, the Vatican and CCP agreed to cooperate in the selection of bishops of a united Catholic Church in China. The objective is a merger of the Underground Catholic Church into the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA). Through the deal, the Vatican had the final say on appointments, but could only select from CCP-approved candidates. The result has been ongoing persecution of Chinese Catholics, such as Bishop Augustine Cui Tai, who has been in jail on and off since 2007. It also seems unlikely that the arrest and future trial of Cardinal Joseph Zen is merely coincidental to the looming renewal of the deal which effectively turns CPCA clergy into apostates.
Worse still, the CCP has reneged on the deal, which effectively permits Beijing to accuse underground clergy of defying the Pope. In 2020, according to Nina Shea, writing in National Review, “China thoroughly negated” the deal “in a dry public posting by the state bureaucracy”, with Order No. 15 making “no provision for any papal role in the process” of selecting bishops, without “even a papal right to approve or veto episcopal appointments in China”. CPCA-aligned clergy must instead “support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party”, with their registration tracked in a database which lists the names of legal clergy, and regulates their conduct through incentives.
Cardinal Zen has previously said he thinks Cardinal Pietro Parolin – key to the deal – is “manipulating” the Pope and may be acting out of “vainglory”, according to an interview with New Bloom Magazine. So key to the deal has Parolin been that he may have dashed his chances of becoming pope. However, in an interview with La Stampa in 2018, Cardinal Parolin said: “We trust that the Chinese faithful, thanks to their spirit of faith, will know how to recognise that our action is animated by trust in the Lord and does not answer to worldly logic”. He added: “I am also convinced that part of the suffering experienced by the Church in China is not so much due to the will of individuals as to the objective complexity of the situation.”
But Zen – since arrested by Hong Kong authorities – has been especially critical of Parolin’s role. Prior to his own resignation, Pope Benedict XVI terminated negotiations with China, likely due to poor conditions on offer. According to Cardinal Zen, “Pope Francis does not know the real Communist Party in China, but Parolin should know.” Cardinal Zen has told Pope Francis: “that he [Parolin] has a poisoned mind. He is very sweet, but I have no trust in this person. He believes in diplomacy, not in our faith.” According to Parolin, speaking in 2020: “With China, our current interest is to normalise the life of the Church as much as possible, to ensure that the Church can live a normal life, which for the Catholic Church is also to have relations with the Holy See and with the Pope”, as reported by AgenSIR.
But, as the Catholic Herald reported in 2020, Cardinal Zen continued to criticise Parolin’s claims about China, accusing him of “telling a series of lies”. Zen criticised a speech in which Cardinal Parolin said Benedict XVI had given his approval to a draft of the 2018 deal, calling it “sickening”. Parolin cited Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, claiming he said that “Pope Benedict XVI [approved] the draft agreement on the appointment of bishops in China, which it was only possible to sign in 2018.” Zen said it was “very ridiculous and humiliating” for Re “to be ‘used’ once again to support the falsehoods of the Most Eminent Secretary.” “Parolin knows he is lying, he knows that I know he is a liar, he knows that I will tell everyone that he is a liar, so in addition to being cheeky, he is also bold,” Cardinal Zen said.
James Jay Carafano and Stefano Graziosi have even asked bluntly in National Review: “How can the global leader of the Catholic Church even contemplate doing business with such a murderous regime?” According to Carafano and Graziosi: “Parolin’s soft-on-Beijing strategy is supported by powerful progressive-Catholic groups from the Society of Jesus to the Community of Sant’Egidio.” Worse of all perhaps, the agreement “could push Catholic-majority Latin American countries, which currently have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, to formally recognize the People’s Republic of China.”
As Taiwan has honoured a former pope, it feels like a slap in the face for the Church to push ahead with the CCP deal, renewed once already in 2020. China’s persecution of Catholics has already escalated, even as one Vatican official said the Church is talking about opening a representative office in Beijing. The Pope has indicated his hopes that the deal with China, already renewed once, will be renewed again, while persecution of Chinese Christians continues. As Zen’s trial has now been set for September 19, this is surely the time for the Pope to at least attach conditions – such as the release of clergy – to any renewal of the deal, if not scrap it altogether. Anything less would be an insult to Chinese Christians, Taiwan and the moral authority of the Church itself.
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