ROME — Pope Francis’s negotiations with China over the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the country risk exposing underground Roman Catholics to intensified oppression from Beijing, according to a senior U.S. official.

“China is one of the fastest-growing churches in the world, Christian churches,” Ambassador Sam Brownback, the State Department’s lead envoy for international religious freedom, told the Washington Examiner. “The Vatican is a certain percentage of that, and most of it is Protestants. I think they would like to get their structure in place in China, in a country where it’s one of the fastest-growing churches in the world.”