Communist Party officials can exert “some measure of control” over the Catholic Church in China after making a deal with the Vatican on the appointment of bishops, according to a top U.S. diplomat.
“It’s control of it through the leadership,” Sam Brownback, the Trump administration’s special envoy for international religious liberty, told the Washington Examiner.
The former Kansas governor spent a week this month in Taiwan and Hong Kong, where he met with religious leaders and laypeople and, according to the State Department, discussed “efforts to counter Chinese influence in the fight to advance religious freedom.”
Neither the church nor China has released details, but under the Vatican deal, Beijing will reportedly provide a list of candidates from which Pope Francis can choose bishops. That list will contain, Brownback predicted in a speech in Hong Kong, “only individuals whom the party deems loyal to its interests.” Brownback, a practicing Roman Catholic, warned that the arrangement will advance the regime’s “war on faith” throughout the country.
“The first group that raised it to me were the Tibetan Buddhists — it wasn’t the Catholic officials,” Brownback told the Washington Examiner. “They’re saying, ‘Gosh, if they can intrude there, what are they going to try to do when picking the next Dalai Lama?’”
That’s a blunt suggestion that Vatican negotiators undermined religious freedom when they reached a provisional agreement they hope will help resolve a dispute that goes back to the 1949 Communist Revolution. Mao Zedong, the first leader of the Communist regime, denounced the Church of Rome as an “imperialist” power and tried to install bishops to lead Catholic parishes in China without the approval of the papacy.
“A religious group should be allowed to pick its own leaders, period,” Brownback said. “And now you have the Chinese government inserting itself in this.”
Pope Francis’ team signed the agreement in September, in the midst of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s campaign to “Sinicize religion” under Communist rule.
“About two years ago, they moved the regulation of religion from the government to the Communist Party,” Brownback observed. “The Communist Party is officially atheist. And they have gone much more aggressive on the faith community since moving this over to being handled by the Communist Party. And they’ve done it across the board on faiths.”
The State Department recently declared that China is persecuting Uighurs and other Muslim groups on a scale unseen since 1930s Nazi Germany. Brownback noted that the program of re-education camps for Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region is led by a Communist official previously responsible for the oppression of Tibetan Buddhists. The Communist Party is also targeting Protestant Christians and local movements, such as the long-persecuted Falun Gong, as part of its widespread effort to consolidate power.
“You really, at the core, you go at the religion,” Brownback said of the Communist strategy. “That’s what holds the people together.”
Brownback openly criticized Beijing in the speech he gave in Chinese-controlled Hong Kong but kept the talk under wraps before his arrival. “I was glad they let me in,” he said. “I tried to keep it quiet before I went there and then after I got there hit it hard at that time, because I didn’t want them to pull a visa on me.”
