China’s Coronavirus Mishandling Further Undermines Accord With Vatican

National Catholic Register, 15 May 2020

In unleashing a global pandemic through negligence at best, malice at worst, the Chinese regime has lost whatever credibility it had even six months ago.

As Chinese diplomats are summoned to chancelleries all over Europe for an upbraiding over Beijing’s complicity in the coronavirus pandemic, the clock is ticking on one of the most important diplomatic decisions facing the Vatican. At the same time, the most senior bishop in Asia has bitterly attacked the credibility of the Chinese regime, restricting any maneuvering room for the Holy See to make further concessions.

In four months the “Provisional Agreement” between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China will expire. Signed on Sept. 22, 2018, it remains in force for two years. Pope Francis will have to decide whether he wants to extend it, seek to amend it or scrap it.

The substance of the accord is hard to evaluate, for it was negotiated in secret, signed in secret and implemented in secret. Even to this day, the leading critic of the agreement, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, emeritus bishop of Hong Kong, has not been permitted to read it — a Chinese accord concealed even from Chinese cardinals.

We only know what the Holy See has publicly said, namely the accord deals with the appointment of bishops, a millennia-old conflict between the Church and regimes that claim authority over the Church, as does the Chinese Communist Party, which is entrusted with state authority in religious affairs.

Media accounts of the accord — unconfirmed by the Holy See —report that the Chinese Communist Party will choose candidates for bishops in Chinese dioceses, with the Holy See exercising a veto.

As a sign of goodwill two years ago, the Holy Father immediately lifted the excommunication of seven Chinese bishops ordained without papal mandate by the state-controlled “patriotic church,” including one who was already dead. The Chinese Communist regime, for its part, has not permitted the underground bishops in full communion with Rome to assume regular positions.

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