Human rights advocates have raised concerns about The heightened restrictions on Christians in China are concerned by the human rights advocates just after Pope Francis’ hope on the Vatican-China deal moves well. The holy Father expressed hope that the Holy See’s agreement with Beijing will be renewed in the fall.
Nearly four years after the Holy See entered into an agreement with Chinese authorities in September 2018, Pope Francis told Reuters in an interview published this week that he believes “the agreement is moving well.”
Human rights advocates disagree with the Pope’s expectation and they have given several proofs that China’s Catholics are facing religious suppression.
Since the agreement was signed in 2018 “the CCP has all but destroyed the Catholic underground church and tightened conformity with its teachings over the patriotic church,” said Nina Shea, the director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute.
“The six new episcopal appointments used to justify the Beijing agreement are offset by the detention, arrest or disappearance of six Vatican-recognized Catholic bishops,” Shea said.
“Children are now banned from churches and exposure to religion, Bibles are tightly restricted and censored on the Internet and in app stores, churches are blanketed with high tech state surveillance, priests and Christian leaders are forced into life-long indoctrination on Christianity according to communist thought, and required to actively support CCP practices, leadership, and core values, even in their sermons,” she added.
Bishop Paul Lei Shiyin of Leshan, one of the illegitimately ordained Chinese bishops whose ex-communication was lifted after the Vatican and China signed the agreement, recently celebrated the birth of the Chinese Communist Party in his local cathedral on June 29, the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul.
Catholics who attended the ceremony in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Leshan were invited to “listen to the word of the Party, feel the grace of the Party, and follow the Party,” according to Asia News.
“Since the deal was reached, things have gone from bad to worse for Catholics in China,”told Reggie Littlejohn.
Littlejohn is the president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, an aid and advocacy organization that works with women on the ground in China. The organization was founded in response to forced abortion and sterilization under China’s one-child policy.
She said that the “secrecy of the China-Vatican deal has been used to bludgeon faithful Chinese Catholics.”
Littlejohn called on the Vatican to release the text of the Holy See’s provisional agreement with the Chinese Communist Party government, which has been kept secret since the agreement was first signed in 2018.
“Faithful Catholics cannot defend themselves or their Church because they do not have access to this secret deal,” she said.