Ninth bishop consecrated in secretive Vatican-China deal under Leo XIV

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Chinese Communist authorities presented a new Catholic bishop’s consecration as a state-controlled appointment, omitting any role by Pope Leo XIV and replacing the traditional papal mandate with an approval document from the state-sanctioned bishops’ conference.

On October 15, Father Ignatius Ding Zuyao was consecrated as the new bishop of Haimen at the Good Shepherd Church in Nantong, Jiangsu province, under the framework of the secret 2018 Vatican-China Agreement. The Holy See Press Office published an official statement asserting that Pope Leo XIV appointed Ding on August 24 after approving his candidacy; however, official Chinese state media and the state-sanctioned Diocese of Haimen completely omitted any reference to the Pontiff, presenting the consecration as a selection governed solely by the state-controlled Catholic organization.

“Father Yang Yu, Secretary-General of the Chinese Catholic Bishops’ Conference, read out the approval document of the Chinese Catholic Bishops’ Conference,” the state-controlled portal Xinde reported.

As confirmed by other sources like AsiaNews, during the liturgical rite in Nantong, attended by approximately 400 priests, religious, and other congregants, the traditional reading of the papal bull – the mandatory canonical mandate from the Successor of Peter required for licit episcopal consecrations worldwide – was entirely discarded. Instead, Yang stepped forward to read an approval document issued by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, an entity not officially recognized by Rome but controlled by the communist regime.

The consecration was presided over by Bishop Joseph Shen Bin of Shanghai, who serves as president of the Chinese Catholic Bishops’ Conference and vice chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

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On April 4, 2023, the Chinese government unilaterally transferred Bishop Joseph Shen Bin to the prestigious Diocese of Shanghai, notifying the Holy See through public media outlets only shortly before his formal installation rather than through official diplomatic channels. This decision directly violated and bypassed the framework of the secret 2018 Sino-Vatican agreement, leaving the Vatican with no real opportunity to evaluate or veto the transfer before it took place.

Shen Bin was assisted by four co-consecrators: Bishop John Wang Renlei of Xuzhou; Bishop Joseph Xu Honggen of Suzhou; Bishop Francis Lu Xinping of Nanjing; and Auxiliary Bishop Ignatius Wu Jianlin of Shanghai.

At just 40 years of age and with only 15 years of priestly ministry, Ding Zuyao becomes the youngest bishop in the Catholic Church, succeeding Shen Bin in the See of Haimen, which had been left vacant since Shen Bin’s transfer in 2023.

The communist authorities in China appear to be intentionally elevating young clerics trained entirely within state-controlled institutions to cement long-term administrative dominance over Chinese dioceses for decades to come. In 2026 alone, four of the five bishops appointed and ordained in China were born after 1980. Elsewhere in the world, among more than 5,400 Catholic bishops, only around 20 were born after 1980. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of them serve as auxiliary bishops rather than diocesan ordinaries.

Informal diplomatic contacts between the Holy See and Beijing began in the early 2000s under then-Father Pietro Parolin and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The decisive institutional turning point occurred on September 22, 2018, when Pope Francis and Parolin – by then elevated to the cardinalate – signed a secret provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops. Designed to bridge the divide between the state-sanctioned Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and the underground Church loyal to Rome, the agreement reportedly allowed Beijing to select episcopal candidates while granting the Pope a right of veto.

Despite fierce warnings from critics like Cardinal Joseph Zen – who condemned the pact as a betrayal of underground Catholics – the agreement was renewed biennially in October 2020 and October 2022, and subsequently extended for a four-year term on October 22, 2024.

Following Pope Francis’s death, the state-controlled Chinese church continued selecting candidates during the vacant see. Under Pope Leo XIV, an initial sign of independence in June 2025 – marked by the appointment of underground Bishop Joseph Lin Yuntuan to Fuzhou – was quickly followed by a return to Parolin’s Ostpolitik.

On July 8, 2025, Leo XIV suppressed the historical underground dioceses of Xuanhua and Xiwanzi to establish the state-delineated Diocese of Zhangjiakou, subsequently confirming state-selected Bishops Wang Zhengui and Ignatius Wu Jianlin.

This trajectory culminated in 2026 with the 20-year prison sentence of Catholic publisher Jimmy Lai in February, met by Vatican silence, and the publication on May 15 of the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, which elevated diplomatic multilateralism into a core approach – a seeming surrender to the ideological framework of the Sino-Vatican secret deal.