Cardinal Parolin defends secretive China-Vatican deal as bearing ‘fruit’

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Holy See’s chief diplomat has issued fresh praise for the highly controversial Sino-Vatican deal, saying that despite setbacks it is “moving in the right direction” and bearing “fruit.”

Speaking to Vatican News while on his recent trip to Jordan – to consecrate a new church at the site of Christ’s baptism – Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin gave his appraisal of the 2018 deal the Holy See made with China on the appointment of bishops.

Parolin, as one of the chief architect’s of the deal, has been a constant defender of the arrangement but many other China experts and activists have warned the Holy See is betraying Chinese Catholics.

Questioned about debate over the deal and its “deeper meaning,” Parolin accepted that it “is logical for differing opinions to arise” about the deal, but that the Holy See “deemed this agreement to be the most effective solution to begin a dialogue with one of the key issues on the table.”

The deal, said Parolin, has two goals: “ensuring that all bishops are in communion with the Pope” and “to foster unity within the Church.”

As for a progress report on achieving these goals, Parolin stated that the agreement is “progressing slowly – sometimes even taking a step backwards – but moving in the right direction.”

“There is no ‘magic’ solution,” he added, “but the agreement represents a journey – a slow and challenging journey that, in my opinion, is beginning to bear some fruit.”

Not specifying what these fruits might be, the Vatican’s secretary of state added that they “might not yet be visible, but they will likely become more evident as trust and the ability to engage in dialogue between the parties grow.”

Parolin’s comments echo those made to LifeSiteNews in November, when he said of the deal that “we are progressing little by little. The challenge is the dialogue – how to dialogue, but we are progressing.”

First signed in 2018, the officially secret deal has been renewed in 2020, 2022, and most recently in October for a longer period of four years. The text has always remained secret, with Parolin attesting in 2023 that such secrecy was “because it has not yet been finally approved.”

READ: Vatican renews its secretive deal with China for appointing bishops

The deal, which “revolves around the basic principle of consensuality of decisions affecting bishops,” is effected by “trusting in the wisdom and goodwill of all,” Parolin said at the time.

The arrangement is believed to recognize the state-approved church in China and allows the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to appoint bishops. The Pope apparently maintains veto power, although in practice it is the CCP that has control. It also allegedly allows for the removal of legitimate bishops to be replaced by CCP-approved bishops.

Indeed, the CCP’s effective upper hand has been demonstrated on a number of occasions when bishops have been appointed by the Chinese authorities and the Vatican simply informed about it afterwards.

Additionally, the deal has led to an increase in religious persecution since it was signed in 2018. In its 2020 report, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China wrote that the persecution witnessed is “of an intensity not seen since the Cultural Revolution.”

READ: Pope Francis said Chinese Catholics will ‘suffer’ under his deal. They are

The commission re-iterated this in its latest 2023 report, most recently noting that the CCP “have continued their efforts to assert control over Catholic leadership, community life, and religious practice, installing two bishops in contravention of the 2018 Sino-Vatican agreement and accelerating the integration of the Church in Hong Kong with the PRC-based, state-sponsored Catholic Patriotic Association and its Party-directed ideology.”

As highlighted by Hong Kong’s emeritus Cardinal Joseph Zen and AsiaNews, the deal is a “betrayal” of Chinese Catholics who have remained loyal to Rome and resisted the demands of Beijing to join the state-approved, communist-style church.

“All bishops who refuse to join the Catholic Patriotic Association are being placed under house arrest, or disappeared, by the CCP,” China expert and Population Research Institute president Steven Moser told LifeSiteNews last year. “Although the Vatican said several years ago that the Sino-Vatican agreement does not require anyone to join this schismatic organization, refusal to do so results in persecution and punishment. And the Vatican stands by and does nothing.”

For his part, Parolin urged “patience” when looking for results from the deal. He told Vatican News that:

I think this is a case where more than in others – but perhaps in general – we must develop the capacity for patience, as the Apostle James encourages us: consider the farmer who sows the seed and then patiently waits for the rains, for the snow, and for the seed to bear fruit. I believe that even in this area, as in many others in life, we need this ability to look beyond immediate results.

The cardinal decried being “slaves to immediacy,” and suggested that critiques of the deal were based on viewing its current results, rather that having an “ability to take a long-term view toward the future, while also considering the past and the difficulties experienced in the past.”

“So, without fostering false illusions – because I think no one is under any illusions in this regard – we can move forward with hope and commitment, trusting that, with God’s grace, this path will yield the desired fruits,” he stated.

But such an attitude from the Vatican’s lead diplomat has not served to assuage fears of local Catholics, nor of China experts and religious freedom advocates. “The Vatican’s silence on human rights and religious freedom in China is profoundly disappointing and dangerously counterproductive,” Lord David Alton told LifeSiteNews about the renewal of the deal.

EXCLUSIVE: British lord condemns renewal of Vatican deal with Communist China

Religious persecution of “underground” Chinese Catholics of every state in life is well documented. In October the Hudson Institute issued a report detailing the continued persecution and “religious repression” of 10 Catholic bishops in China – a persecution that has only “intensified since the 2018 China-Vatican agreement on the appointment of bishops.” “The Vatican wants us to forget 10 inconvenient bishops who reject the right of the CCP to tell them what to believe, think, or say,” Alton commented about the study.

Benedict Rogers – trustee and co-founder of Hong Kong Watch – agreed that “diplomacy has its place,” but warned the the Holy See’s relationship with China had left that behind.

“Diplomacy has its place. Negotiations are necessary,” he said. “Reconciliation is laudable and should always be an objective for the Church. Naivety is forgivable. But complicity and appeasement – to which the Vatican’s approach is moving perilously close – have no place in Catholic social teaching.”

READ: China demands more ‘rigorous governance of religion,’ mandates Catholics study socialism