Pompeo Visits Vatican Next Week to Confront Concerns About China’s Persecution of Religious Liberty

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will visit Europe next week, including meetings with senior Vatican officials.

During his Sept. 27-Oct. 2 visit to southern Europe, Pompeo will meet with the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Gallagher, the Holy See’s minister for relations with nations, and plans to meet with the Vatican’s senior officials in a diplomatic effort to promote and protect religious freedom, a State Department spokesman said in a statement Thursday (Sept. 24, 2020). Seminar Speech. Pompeo is expected to criticize China’s persecution of religious freedom in his speech and to express concern to Vatican officials about China’s persecution of religions in related talks.

On September 19, Pompeo publicly called on the Holy See not to renew a two-year agreement with Beijing on the appointment of bishops, saying that the Holy See reached the agreement with the Communist Party two years ago in hopes of benefiting Catholics in China, but that the Communist authorities have increasingly trampled on religious beliefs. He said the Vatican would “endanger its own moral authority” if the agreement was renewed, and warned that if the Communist Party succeeded and the Catholic Church and other religious groups were “subjugated,” the Communist regime, which despises human rights, would become even more powerful. “bottom line”.

Still, a few days later, the Vatican renewed its agreement with China, saying in a statement that long and careful negotiations had preceded the signing of the Vatican-China agreement. Cardinal Parolin said the agreement was significant for the life of the Church in China and for the Vatican-Chinese dialogue, adding that all Chinese bishops are now one with the Holy See for the first time.

Catholics in China have long been divided between the underground Catholics, who maintain full communion with Rome, and the officially sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which appoints bishops who are often not officially recognized by the Communist Party. For decades, the underground Catholics were subjected to repression, including long prison terms.