Pope Francis cozies up to the ChiComms

What is going on between the Vatican, Xi Jinping? Answers are needed

(Note: When I read Pope Francis doing business with the CCP, it grabbed my attention and any person of faith should be concerned.) 

Pope Francis has been cozying up to China’s Xi Jinping, putting the Catholic Church in a dubious position. 

The largest church in the world, the Catholics, have been doing secret business with the most oppressive regime in the world.

From the spiritual and emotional high of Pope John Paul II aiding the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s, the moves Pope Francis has made with the Chinese Communist Party seem inexplicable.

In 2018, Pope Francis and the CCP agreed they would reach a collective understanding on the appointment of Chinese bishops. In April, China unilaterally selected a bishop for the Diocese of Shanghai, Bishop Joseph Shen Bin, without prior knowledge or approval by the Vatican. In mid-July, Pope Francis accepted the appointment. In November 2022, “Bishop John Peng Weizhao was installed as an auxiliary bishop for the Diocese of Jiangxi, an ecclesiastic territory recognized by Chinese authorities, but not by the Vatican,” the Catholic Herald (CH) reported. The Vatican issued a rare public condemnation of Peng Weizhao in late November 2022 when, as the CH reported, he joined several state-sanctioned organizations in a ceremony marking his installation as auxiliary in the unrecognized region.

The Church must have fidelity to scriptural truth, moral clarity, and be culturally relevant. The pope doing business with the CCP provokes genuine concern.

Jump to 2019 and 2020 in Hong Kong, and the CCP established a National Security Law that caused city officials to arrest and imprison hundreds of people under threats to national security.

Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong became the face of the protests over an anti-extradition bill the CCP imposed on Hong Kong. “The bill sought to extradite ‘criminals’ to mainland China, which would erode Hong Kong’s judicial independence and harm Chinese dissidents in the city,“ The Federalist reported.

However, Zen and other civil leaders set up the 612 Humanitarian Fund to provide money to people injured, arrested, attacked, or threatened with violence during those protests. A Hong Kong Court convicted Zen and 5 others.

Zen ascended to Cardinal from Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis’ predecessor. 

Did Beijing insist that the Vatican accept only Chinese government-appointed bishops and give them full authority to rule a Chinese diocese? 

Zen prefers the Chinese underground Catholic church. Zen has traveled to the Vatican several times in an attempt to convince Pope Francis to alter his stance with China. The CCP sanctions certain churches that “register” with the government, for Catholics it’s the Communist-administered Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.

The cold, hard truth is China is a godless and atheistic state. China is the worst human rights violator on earth. Uyghur Muslim re-education camps, forced sterilizations and slave labor just to name some of the violations in Xinjiang province. China persecutes Christians and other religious minorities. And that is just the beginning of the CCP’s human rights violations.

In an interview with CNA (Catholic News Agency), Cardinal Zen said that the Church's silence on Communist human rights abuses, including the detention of more than 1 million Uyghurs in a network of concentration camps in Xinjiang Province, was damaging the ability of the Church to play a role in shaping the future of the country. ‘The resounding silence will damage the work of evangelization,’ the cardinal said. ‘Tomorrow when people will gather to plan the new China, the Catholic Church may not be welcome.’

John Cassara is a retired U.S. Treasury special agent who was focused on anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing, He wrote the following for Crisis magazine:

The history of the CCP is similarly brutal, depraved, and corrupt. More than three decades after the Tiananmen Square massacre, the CCP’s version of morality has been on display during the Hong Kong democracy protests; the million-person forced labor and reeducation camps for Uyghur Muslims; the multi-faceted repression China practices at home and seeks to export abroad; internal all-encompassing Orwellian surveillance; persecution of Christians and the proscribed Falun Gong religious group; and countless other human rights abuses, including the one-child policy, enforced abortions, involuntary sterilizations, and the confiscation of children by the authorities. Investigations have shown that some of the country’s physicians have been ordered to engage in grotesque experiments on people or, even worse, to maim or kill them for their organs and profit.

By 2021, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CCP, it was estimated that the Communist party was responsible for the deaths of over 65 million people. It is probable that more than 400 million abortions have been performed in China since the CCP implemented a controversial one-child policy 50 years ago. No organization in human history has killed more human beings than the CCP; not Nazi Germany, nor the Soviet Union, nor the Mongol invaders of the 13th century, nor even the decimation of the native populations of the Americas due primarily to imported European disease and epidemics. In all of human history, the CCP has shown itself to be the world’s most ruthless murdering machine.

No one can blame Pope Francis for seeking a legacy that would include resuming a relationship with China. There are 1.4 billion people there. But at what price are China’s demands? 

Catholics should know what it has compromised to do business with Xi Jinping’s CCP.

They need to ask themselves the questions from Matthew 16:26 (ESV): “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”