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.”
Vatican negotiations over the nomination of bishops resulted in a 2018 pact that Brownback has faulted for giving the Chinese Communist Party “some measure of control” over the church. The Holy See is expected to renew that deal next month, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wants the pope to scrap the agreement and condemn Beijing’s repression of Uighur Muslims and other religious minorities.
“Beijing will market [the agreement] as saying they’re acceptable in how they treat their religious,” said Brownback, who is a Roman Catholic. “And that’s part of our concern, is that the Communist Party in China has been horrible and they’ve gotten worse, it’s not gotten better, and then how this’ll be marketed by the Chinese government.”
The terms of the agreement have been kept secret, but it is regarded as a step toward allowing the Catholic Church to operate openly in China. In exchange, Chinese officials reportedly gain “the official registration of all Catholic bishops, priests and communities, including those of the so-called underground community,” according to America, a Jesuit publication.
That provision alarms the faithful in mainland China — an estimated 5 million so-called “underground” Roman Catholics worship in secret — who suspect that Chinese authorities will use the registry as a target list.
“A number of people in the underground church are concerned about that very aspect, and they’ve got good grounds to be,” said Brownback, noting that Chinese authorities have arrested Protestants after obtaining house church membership rolls.
“So, it’s not without basis that people would say, ‘I’m not giving them my name, because maybe I’m OK today, but what about tomorrow?’ And there’s a regime that wants to really tighten down even more,” he said. “So, I think it’s a legitimate concern that underground Catholics would have.”
Pompeo cited the oppression of Chinese Roman Catholics in a recent op-ed urging the pope to abandon the pact. An irritated Pope Francis declined to meet with Pompeo, as senior Catholic officials suggested that the top U.S. diplomat sought to use the dispute to stoke President Trump’s reelection bid. Vatican diplomats hope to extend the agreement despite their misgivings about the pact.
Brownback suggested that they are repeating the errors of Western governments that agreed to establish economic relations with China in recent decades, only to realize belatedly that those relationships enriched a Chinese Communist Party that used the financial gains to consolidate power and launch “a cold war,” as U.S. intelligence officials see it, against the United States.
“I think it’s the same thing,” he said. “I think it’s them treating China with kid gloves and not being critical when they’ve got a million people in detention facilities primarily because of their faith.”
