Pope Leo will have to face the delicate issue of China, yet he may want to see how the problem is perceived in Beijing. Here is a summary.
One of the most delicate topics Pope Leo will have to address is undoubtedly China. The meticulous Vatican diplomacy will surely be able to tell him every detail of this history, which has engaged the Holy See for over half a century.
But this is only a part of the story. Another, perhaps more substantial one—at least for Beijing—lies in the debate that has swept through the Chinese Communist Party, ultimately pushing it to open up to the Holy See. However the Church may decide to go about China, it may be crucial to the party’s interests with the Vatican.
Unlike many other countries, Beijing doesn’t have a ‘natural’ respect and understanding of the Vatican. Except for a few specialists, it was totally ignorant and vague about the Holy See. A series of events moved the party discussion and pushed the party to pay attention and learn more about the Holy See and its role.
The USSR was established in a country that was deeply Christian. Other non-Christian countries are not communist. China is both non-Christian and communist. It’s for the Church both a challenge and an opportunity. Unlike other countries and unlike the times of Jesuits in China in the 17th century, China has no strong ‘competing’ religious presence (the Hindu or the Muslim in India, the Buddhist in East Asia), and Chinese people are starved of religion.
Here, I summarize my discussions in China over the past 26 years.
A Religious “Necessity”
The first significant moment came from something that had nothing to do with the Catholics, at least on the surface.
On the evening of April 25, 1999, over 10,000 elderly followers of the Falun Gong (a new religious semi-Buddhist group) surrounded the official residence of the Chinese leadership, Zhongnanhai. It was the first time such a protest had occurred; it had been just ten years since the Tiananmen protests, and the leadership felt threatened.
At that time, Falun Gong (FLG) preached against modern and Western science. They claimed that diseases did not exist. Diseases were only sins to be purged through prayer, making medicines harmful. In some ways, their beliefs were similar to those of the Boxers, the 1900 anti-Western, traditionalist rebels who believed they were invincible and could not be killed by foreign bullets thanks to ancient spells.
Falun Gong was present within the armed forces and the police, effectively constituting an underground party within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). They claimed to have 100 million adherents and hundreds of millions of sympathizers.
Politically, the FLG is still an unclear chapter in China. That protest ultimately led to Qiao Shi’s political demise and the complete rise of Jiang Zemin. Qiao officially retired in 1997 but continued to be very influential. In 1998, Qiao, the former security czar, had called for tolerance toward FLG. For this and because many security heads were involved in the protests, Qiao was sidelined entirely. Jiang then concentrated an immense amount of power, only to be challenged by Xi Jinping in 2012.
Was it a failed conspiracy by Qiao? Was it Jiang’s doing? Nothing is clear.
But that’s really where the Vatican’s adventure in China began. Jewish Christians spread alongside the repression of the Jewish Zealots. The Christians did not cause the death of the Zealots, nor does the FLG affair have anything to do with the Vatican; quite the opposite. The Communists did not convert to the Pope’s authority. They simply had their reasons for turning their attention to the Church of Rome.
To senior party officials, the FLG spread revealed a serious and concrete problem: an unfulfilled hunger for religion in China.
The party could not satisfy this need because it was officially atheist. Maoism, elevated to an almost religious status during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), had failed. People had long since stopped believing in a Maoist salvation. The traditional system of beliefs that had accompanied the imperial dynasties was shattered by a century of exposure to Western culture, the adoption of radical Marxism, and decades of fervent anti-religious fanaticism.
Therefore, with the liberalizations of the 1980s and 1990s, many people returned to vague memories and shadows of traditional belief systems. Falun Gong was the most organized among them.
The party then had to face two issues: first, the strange beliefs themselves, and second, the legitimate need for religion. It could crack down on the strange beliefs, but it had to do something to quench the religious thirst. If the party could not provide a religion, people would create their own at home. Thus, some officials started arguing that offering a traditional, well-known, and tested religion the government could engage with was better.
In other words, if Marx was right in saying that religion is the opium of the people, this only applied when the party aimed to lead the revolution. Yet, as the historian Sima Qian explained in his 1st-century AD Records of the Historian, the methods to seize power are necessarily different from those used to maintain it. Thus, religion was bad for a revolutionary party seeking power, but it was valuable and necessary for a ruling party wishing to stay in control.
Which religion?
Another issue was understanding which religion could be helpful from Beijing’s perspective. Protestant Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Taoists—these are all organized into small groups. From a governance standpoint, this makes relationships both easier and more complicated.
It’s easier because no single transnational entity has a foreign center. The government can talk to local leaders and groups and try to persuade them to follow its guidance. However, the difficulty is precisely in this system. With a multitude of autonomous groups, the government is always chasing after the latest Protestant pastor or Buddhist monk to try to keep them all in line. The practical management is left with local officials who may not fully align with Beijing.
The Catholic Church is precisely the opposite. It is a transnational organization centered in Rome that is unreachable to Beijing. On the other hand, one could communicate with Rome and reach an agreement, making local problems more manageable.
Therefore, Beijing began to consider systematically addressing the issue of the Catholic Church. The canonization of Chinese saints on October 1, 2000, became a stumbling block that set China and the Holy See back for years. Eventually, the Chinese decided it also occurred because of a lack of direct and efficient communication channels.
This led the party to review the entire situation from scratch. The first issue was that the party mistakenly believed that Beijing and Rome appointed different bishops. This could have been a basis for negotiation—mutual recognition and discussions on nominations.
Yet, after a review, the party realized that the Pope had recognized all bishops appointed by Beijing. They had sought acknowledgment and forgiveness through the Hong Kong mission. The Chinese authorities did not know about this process, but the Holy See in Rome believed that Beijing was fully aware of it.
Some well-meaning Chinese Catholics and officials thought this problem was insurmountable, and they sought a practical solution: receiving appointments from Beijing and secretly asking Rome for forgiveness afterward.
Authority of the Pope in China
The party could not acknowledge the authority of a foreign religious entity within China, branding it “interference in China’s internal affairs.” Meanwhile, the Church—because it is Catholic—could not recognize bishops not appointed by the Pope.
Such recognition would have far-reaching global repercussions for the Vatican, effectively ending the Catholic Church. It would be equivalent to admitting the triumph of the Protestant Reformation, allowing each country to appoint its bishops freely. When Jesuits had a significant influence at the Chinese court in the 17th century—serving as ministers and friends of the emperor—there was no bishop in Beijing, nor was there a nunciature.
Accepting this would have implied limiting the rights of the emperor—the “Son of Heaven,” who also had religious authority.
But the Chinese president, adhering to Western Marxism, was not a religious authority; he was officially an atheist. This allowed space for a genuine compromise and a historic opening for the Church in China. The Pope held religious authority but not civil jurisdiction over the bishops; Beijing had civil authority but not religious rights over the same bishops. This arrangement was one that the Church had centuries of experience dealing with—since the Middle Ages’ conflicts with the Holy Roman Emperor—but China had no precedent.
2007 marked a pivotal time. Pope Benedict XVI wrote a letter to Chinese Catholics emphasizing a fundamental principle—that Chinese Catholics must be good citizens of China. They would officially cease to be presumed fifth columns of foreign forces seeking to overthrow the Beijing government. Instead, they should be honest and diligent citizens of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), just as all Catholics should be good citizens of their countries.
A few months later, at the 17th Party Congress, Secretary and President Hu Jintao dedicated an entire section of his official speech to the importance of religious figures in promoting social harmony. This established the framework within which normalization of relations and negotiations over episcopal appointments could take place.
However, Benedict’s letter caused controversy within the Church. Some cardinals strongly challenged its theses. On the other hand, there was opposition in China, too, because a footnote opposed the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, the center of decades-long conflicts among Chinese Catholics.
Patriotic or Not
In the 1950s, to bring religions in China under control, the party organized patriotic associations that demanded a loyalty oath from Chinese priests and bishops, as well as Protestant, Buddhist, Muslim, and Taoist clerics. According to Rome, these associations encroached upon church life and did not belong to the Church itself. Over time, the powers of the Patriotic Association grew, gaining a life of their own: managing all church property, receiving state support, and collecting funds, sometimes with the help of Chinese Catholics abroad.
From the 1980s onward, especially during the 1990s and 2000s, the Patriotic Association operated as an entity that responded only partially to the central government and Rome, opposing normal relations. Normalization would have placed the association more under Beijing’s control and the watchful eye of Rome; without normalization, the association would remain unaccountable to either.
The question of the Patriotic Association was thus central to managing the Church’s position in China. A fundamental principle was at stake as well: loyalty to the government. The Church believed Chinese Catholics could, and should, be good citizens, but this did not necessarily mean they had to join the Patriotic Association. Conversely, the association claimed that membership was a practical and essential expression of loyalty.
The normalization of relations between the Holy See and Vietnam—long running parallel to China’s—then gained a different momentum because, in Vietnam, there was no Patriotic Catholic Association to deal with.
The Holy See and China navigated this complex reality for about five years until Bishop Ma Daqing of Shanghai was appointed in 2012. His appointment was made jointly, signifying a new consensus between the two sides.
However, at the time of his investiture, Ma, a member of the Patriotic Association, declared that he would resign from it. The Chinese authorities perceived it as a betrayal, a sign that the Holy See was not entirely trustworthy. A different signal was needed to rebuild trust.
It came with the election of Pope Francis in 2013 and the subsequent appointment of Pietro Parolin as Secretary of State. Parolin had been personally involved with China since the late 1990s—serving as Undersecretary of State—and had proved reliable in dealings with Chinese officials.
In 2015, the Chinese realized the Pope’s international prestige. That year coincided with the US presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It also featured visits from both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Pope Francis.
The Pope’s visit overshadowed Xi Jinping’s trip and the US presidential campaign, highlighting the Holy See’s central role in the cultural and political dialogue of the Western world.
It demonstrated to Beijing that the Vatican was a key player in international diplomacy and cultural relations—an influence China could not ignore.
This shift opened a window of opportunity for the future of the Church in China. It suggested that a path toward improved relations could be achieved with patience, pragmatic diplomacy, and continuous dialogue.
However, many obstacles remain, particularly regarding the status of bishops and the role of the Patriotic Catholic Association. Despite all this, an agreement on the appointments of bishops was finally signed in 2018.
The road forward remains uncertain. Pope Francis hoped to travel to China but didn’t, nor did Cardinal Parolin as Secretary of State.
Now Pope Leo will have to steer the ties again.
