The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said Tuesday (Sept. 15) that religious freedom must be the result of a renewed agreement between the Vatican and China. The federal government commission mentioned that underground Catholics in China continue to be “persecuted.
The two-year tentative agreement between the Vatican and the Chinese government on the appointment of bishops, reached in 2018, expired in October. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, said Monday that the Vatican is likely to renew the agreement and that it would therefore help “normalize the life of the Church.
In response, Gary Bauer, a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a cross-party federal advisory body, said that if the Vatican’s agreement with China is renewed, the Communist Party must stop persecuting underground Catholics.
“Communist China continues to persecute Catholics in China. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom wants any future agreement between the Vatican and China to be rooted in the protection of religious freedom,” the commission said Tuesday on its official Twitter account. The tweet quoted Cardinals Bauer and Parolin.
In one of its recent annual reports, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said that religious persecution in China worsened in 2019. According to Bauer, Chinese authorities have waged a war on religion.
Catholics in China have long been divided between underground Catholics, who maintain full communion with Rome, and the officially sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which appoints bishops often unrecognized by the Communist Party, and the underground Catholics, who maintain full communion with Rome. Over the course of decades, underground Catholics were subjected to repression, including long prison terms.
The Vatican sees the agreement it signed with China in 2018 as a means to unify the Chinese Church and support the appointment of bishops. The agreement is seen as a subtle shift in relations between Beijing and the Vatican that could eventually lead to a resumption of ties that have been broken since 1951.
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