Human Rights Champ Nina Shea Slams Pope Francis for China Policy

ROME — Human rights champion Nina Shea has slammed Pope Francis for his policy of appeasement with China, insisting it emboldens President Xi Jinping in his oppression of Chinese Catholics.

China’s Catholics and the faithful of other religions face “the worst repression since Mao,” writes Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, and the Vatican’s 2018 agreement granting Beijing a say in the appointment of Chinese bishops has only served Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interests.

As Breitbart News reported last month, China has exploited the Vatican’s desperate attempts at appeasement to push through unilateral decisions harming the Catholic Church, knowing it will receive no serious pushback from Rome.

In July, for instance, the Vatican announced it would accept China’s autonomous appointment of Bishop Joseph Shen Bin as the new bishop of Shanghai, a move the CCP made in open breach of its 2018 accord with the Vatican.

Shen was appointed by the state-run Council of Chinese Bishops, an organization of which Shen himself was the head. Shen has pledged to uphold the CCP’s principles of Chinese Church independence and self-administration and the campaign of “Sinicizing” Catholicism in China.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Francis Rocca said at the time that the Vatican’s capitulation constituted “the latest sign of the pope’s determination to pursue a rapprochement with Beijing despite China’s tightening restrictions on religion.”

In her August 6 article, Shea notes that Beijing is using surveillance technology in churches to ensure compliance with its program of “Sinicization,” whereby churches are obliged to “spread CCP principles” and inculcate the “values” of the Communist party.

 

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin has implausibly maintained that Sinicization is simply evangelical “inculturation,” Shea observes.

Shea also suggests that Pope Francis may have an opportunity to revisit the Vatican’s ill-begotten accord in his upcoming visit to Mongolia together with Hong Kong’s Bishop Stephen Chow, newly named by Francis to the college of Cardinals.

Chow could “serve as a key papal China-policy adviser,” Shea adds, asserting that the pope “could benefit from frank, on-the-ground accounts by someone he trusts.”

Time will tell whether Chow’s elevation will prove beneficial to China’s Catholics. A Jesuit like Francis, Chow has shown himself unwilling to criticize Beijing or to defend the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, just the sort of compliant bishop the CCP prefers.

Parroting Beijing’s rhetoric, Chow has thrown his full support behind Sinicization, suggesting that the party’s principles significantly align with Catholic teaching. This may be exactly what Francis wants in a new cardinal but offers little hope to China’s beleaguered Catholics of the underground Church.

Thomas D. Williams is Breitbart Rome Bureau Chief and the author of The Coming Christian Persecution.