CCP severing Catholics from Pope
Pontiff had perfect moment to expose China’s crimes
This is a photo of Pope Francis after being elected in March 2013. Casa Rosada via Wikimedia licensing
The CCP is attempting to sever Chinese Catholics from the Vatican with its sinicization plan.
The "sinicization of religion” is a policy being pushed by Chinese President Xi Jinping to make Xi and the communist state he leads god, rather than a power not of this world.
Forty years ago, Pope John Paul II challenged communism. With former President Ronald Reagan, they witnessed the end of the Cold War under the communist Soviet Union. The late Pope John Paul II is rolling over in his grave.
China is one of the most repressive nations on earth with political and religious prisoners. Since 2017, China embarked on a genocide of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province in Northwest China. This policy has included mass detention, surveillance, forced sterilizations, forced labor, forced assimilation, and re-education camps, among other abuses in China, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. The Uyghur slave labor in Xinjiang Province compelled the U.S. and other nations to reject goods produced from forced labor there.
After acting against Uyghurs in 2017, China created church organizations like the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, a benign name with sinister plans. Pope Francis bowed to Xi in 2018, destroying long-standing Catholic canon of not allowing governing authorities to influence appointments of bishops.
This is a photo of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the APEX Peru Summit earlier this year. Executive Office of the President of the United State via Wikipedia
President Xi embarrassed Pope Francis in April as reported by Bitter Winter’s He Yuyan:
On April 4, 2023, Bishop (Joseph) Shen Bin, until then Bishop of Haimen, was installed by the CCP as the new Bishop of Shanghai. The Vatican declared officially that “the Holy See learned from the media of the installation” only the morning it happened.
Pope Francis could’ve created an international crisis with China and rejected Shen Bin. It was a golden opportunity to expose the CCP: their lies, deceit, human rights abuses, Uyghur genocide, and much more.
You don’t get that moral clarity from a Pope more focused on climate change than a power not of this world.
The Vatican grudgingly and belatedly announced the Shen Bin move on July 15.
In late September, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released a statement on China’s “sinicization of religion.” It stated:
Through regulations and state-controlled religious organizations, authorities incorporate CCP ideology into every facet of religious life for Buddhists, Catholic and Protestant Christians, Muslims, and Taoists. They also forcibly eradicate religious elements considered contradictory to the CCP’s political and policy agenda with ultranationalist overtones. Government officials have installed CCP loyalists as leading religious figures, altered houses of worship with CCP-approved architecture, integrated CCP propaganda into religious doctrines, and otherwise criminalized non-CCP-backed religious activities, all with the goal to ensure the stability of CCP rule. These government measures have routinely violated the internationally protected right to freedom of religion or belief.
The Catholic News Agency’s Tyler Arnold reported on the USCIRF’s move Oct. 1.
Any Catholic church that doesn’t get in line with the CCP is regarded as a ‘cult’ and subjected to the pressure and control of the state as church leaders disappear. As USCIRF Commissioner Asif Mahmood noted, these churches are regarded as failing to allow the CCP ‘to dictate religious doctrine and regulate religious affairs.’ He said, ‘Ultimately, the Chinese government is solely interested in instilling unwavering obedience and devotion to the CCP, its political agenda, and its vision for religion, not protecting the religious freedom rights of Catholics.’
Chinese President Xi Jinping named Joseph Shen Bin Bishop of Shanghai in April 2024, with the Vatican grudgingly and belatedly announcing the move in July. X/@TheChurchInAsia
When Shen Bin traveled to the Vatican in November, it was expected he would announce ministry plans for Shanghai. As Yuyan reported, Shen Bin’s visit didn’t meet expectations:
Catholics who attended the seminar told ‘Bitter Winter’ that the Bishop did not discuss at all the Vatican Synod nor Pope Francis and his recent documents. On the contrary, he focused on ‘Sinicization,’ which as it is now clear does not mean adapting religion to Chinese customs but to the CCP’s ideology. An optimist could object that Bishop Shen Bin did not explicitly tell Shanghai Catholics ‘not’ to listen to the Pope’s teachings, which oppose the CCP’s ideas on key matters such as abortion and the role of religion in society. But for a bishop ignoring the Pope and his documents in such solemn events is tantamount to rejecting them.
Meanwhile, Christian Daily International (CDI) reported the following on Nov. 22 from a former USCIRF commissioner:
Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, wrote in the National Review in October that the government's installation of Shen Bin violated the 2018 agreement. She noted that he had replaced Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin, who has been detained at a seminary since 2012.
Ma Daqin, in turn, had replaced Joseph Xing Wenzhi, who had served as bishop for six years before he went missing in 2011.
Shea told the CNA’s Arnold:
‘Catholic bishops are special targets because of their essential role within the hierarchical Church in ensuring communion with the successor of St. Peter,’ Shea said. ‘Those who resist [government intrusion] are placed in indefinite detention without due process, banished from their episcopal sees, placed under indefinite security police investigation, disappeared, and/or prevented from exercising their episcopal ministries.’
Shea identified actions against Chinese Catholic bishops to CDI:
‘At least 10 Chinese Catholic bishops, all Vatican-approved, are currently in indefinite detention, have disappeared or been forced out of their episcopal posts, or are under open-ended investigation by security police,’ Shea stated. ‘To evade Western sanctions, the Chinese Communist Party uses less bloody and more hidden methods of coercion against these bishops than the show trials and physical torture of the Mao era.’
Shea noted multiple examples for CDI:
The bishop of Baoding, Hebei Province, James Su Zhimin, has been in secret detention for 27 years after he led a procession to a Marian shrine. The CCP has imprisoned and tortured him.
The bishop of Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, Peter Shao Zhumin, has been in secret detention since his arrest in January, noting he has been held without due process six times since 2018.
In Xuanhua Diocese, Bishop Augustine Cui Tai was arrested in April 2021 and placed in secret, indefinite detention for the fourth time since 2018.
Authorities placed Zhengding Diocese Bishop Julius Jia Zhiguo under house arrest in 2018.
In Xinxiang, police in May 2021 closed the seminary of Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu and placed him in indefinite detention at an unknown location.
‘Few outside China know of these 10 persecuted bishops,’ she wrote. ‘Yet they are an essential part of the faithful leadership needed to ensure that the 400-year-old Chinese Catholic Church continues in communion with Rome and follows Catholic teaching. They stand as a testament to the reality that China represses the Catholic Church along with all its other religions.’
Pope Francis had better develop a backbone, otherwise Catholic history in China will be a memory, and it will be his legacy.
