Historic understanding with China after years of discrimination

China has been the main 'Bergoglian' foreign policy dossier, resulting in 2018 in an agreement between the Holy See and the People's Republic of China. The "provisional" understanding, renewed twice for a two-year period and last October extended for four, concerns the appointments of bishops in China, a thorny issue that has marked over time serious persecution and discrimination - it was the era of the "underground church" - largely overcome already after Benedict XVI's historic letter to Chinese Catholics in 2007, written in large part by the then young undersecretary Monsignor Pietro Parolin, then since 2013 Secretary of State and cardinal with Francis.

Ever since his election, Bergoglio has shown great interest in China ("I would like to visit it, I respect it, I admire it," he said flying over the country in 2015 on his return from Korea) but the long-awaited trip has never taken place, not even a meeting with leader Xi Jinping. Under Ratzinger's pontificate, the China dossier had in fact come to a standstill, also due to internal criticism within the Church, especially from the combative Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, until 2009 archbishop of Hong Kong and proud opponent of Beijing, who will also be arrested in 2022. Bergoglio - also driven by his Jesuit vocation towards Asia - gave new impetus to the dialogue, appointed Parolin, highly respected in the CCP, and an agreement was reached, frowned upon even by the Americans, who were already preaching "decoupling", the disengagement from China. And in fact, in 2020, in the final phase of the Trump-1 administration, a decisive offensive against the renewal is launched from Washington, so much so that the then Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, will come to Rome to try to be received by the Pope, who instead will not see him. Then he will appeal for religious freedom, but inside the Holy See there was no room for second thoughts.

Last October, the renewal was for four years "given the consensus reached for a fruitful application of the Provisional Agreement", a communiqué said. This shows that the dialogue between the Holy See and the Chinese Authorities - after the slow start and the "running-in" phase - continues as a gradual path, which step by step sees its horizon widen and new opportunities to verify the growth of sincerity, loyalty and mutual trust in the relations between the two parties. Today, all the Catholic bishops of the People's Republic of China are in full and public hierarchical communion with the Bishop of Rome, and illegitimate episcopal ordinations, i.e., celebrated without papal consent, have no longer taken place in China: events that for decades, from the late 1950s until 2011, had wounded ecclesial communion and opened up lacerations among Chinese Catholics.

Over the past six years," recalled the Fides news agency, among the press organs best informed on the dossier, "amidst stalemates and difficulties (including those related to the time of the pandemic) nine new Catholic episcopal ordinations have been celebrated in mainland China, while eight so-called 'unofficial' bishops, consecrated in the past outside of the procedures imposed by the Chinese apparatus - referring to the well-known Patriotic Association, linked to the party - at their request were publicly recognised in their episcopal role even by the political authorities in Beijing (one of them, the elderly Peter Lin Jiashan, bishop of Fuzhou, later passed away in April 2023). On several occasions, Parolin also expressed the hope that the Vatican would have a stable presence in China. "Even if it might not initially have the form of a papal representation and an apostolic nunciature (diplomatic relations have been interrupted since 1951, the Holy See has them with Taiwan, ed.), it could nevertheless increase and deepen our contacts. This is our aim'.