Next Pope? A Bad Vatican Deal with China May Sink a Contender

Beijing reneged on a deal on appointing Chinese bishops. Cardinal Pietro Parolin pays the price?

This week, global media covering of the selection of a Roman Catholic Church leader to replace Pope Francis, who died April 21, mostly has focused on the contest between candidates who favor Francis’s relatively liberal outreach on social issues and those preferring the sterner outlooks of his two predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

This week, on the eve of the conclave in which 133 Cardinals gather in Vatican City to select a new Pontiff, headlines turned to one of the front-running contenders, Cardinal Pietro Parolin – and not in a way that might favor his election.

Though debates over hot-button issues like abortion, women’s place in Church governance and sexual identity stoke controversies, Parolin’s candidacy attracted attention over a distant issue: The Catholic Church’s rocky relations with China.

Parolin was Francis’s Secretary of State, a job usually reserved for the Pope’s closest advisor. It also put Parolin in charge of foreign relations. In that role, Parolin negotiated a 2018 agreement with the People’s Republic on collaboration in the selection of bishops in China.

The results have received negative reviews. China ignored the accord and went ahead to appoint bishops without consulting, or even informing, Francis.

One question that gained traction this week was whether the apparent failure will sink Parolin’s chances to succeed to the Throne of Peter.

Parolin negotiated and signed onto the 2018 agreement. The Pope declared it a breakthrough and Parolin told reporters that he was still in charge. “There is a dialogue on potential candidates, but Rome nominates, the Pope nominates, that’s clear,” he said.

Well, not so clear. China’s leader-for-life Xi Jinping viewed it more of a suggestion than a concession. China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs issued regulations that ignored the accord. Only the state and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which it runs as a subordinate agency, are involved in selecting bishops. Beijing did not hesitate to appoint them, not even informing the Vatican.

In 2023, China announced the appointment of Shen Bin to head the Church in Shanghai, the country’s largest diocese. The Vatican only learned about the “installation” of Bishop Shen from media reports, after the fact. When asked to comment on the event, the Church Press Office spokesperson responded, “For the moment, I have nothing to say about the Holy See’s assessment of the matter.”

The Pope later authorized the appointment ex post facto. Parolin took center stage in defending the Pope’s acquiescence despite the breach. Francis “decided nevertheless to rectify the canonical irregularity,” he said in a statement. Parolin argued that it was necessary to maintain “open dialogue” and a “respectful encounter with the Chinese side.”

Nonetheless, he insisted that under the 2018 agreement, it is “indispensable that all episcopal appointments in China … be made by consensus, as agreed, and to keep alive the spirit of dialogue between the parties.”

“Together we must prevent disharmonious situations that create disagreements and misunderstandings,” he said.

Beijing ignored the combined rebuke and appeal. Last year, it doubled down on unilateral appointments. It appointed Ji Weizhou as a bishop in Lyuliang, a town in Shanxi Province, according to a Chinese government statement. Moreover, the Lyuliang diocese was created the same moment the appointment was made.

Francis recognized the legitimacy of the new diocese and its bishop on January 20 this year. The official Vatican statement said Francis had simply “remedied” the situation.

That was not enough for Beijing to show it is in charge. China appointed two new bishops, one (an auxilliary bishop) for Shanghai and another for Henan province, in late April – after Francis had died. Under Vatican rules, such episcopal appointments cannot be made between the time of a Pope’s death and the election of a successor.

With the conclave underway, no one is in a position to comment on the report – certainly not Parolin, who is sequestered with the other Cardinals as they decide who will succeed Francis.

“Beijing is reiterating the autonomy of the Church in China, to test Francis’s successor over the [2018] Agreement,” surmised AsiaNews, a Catholic journal.

Supporters of Francis’s policiy counsel patience. “The past 10 years were not the ideal international context to approach and discuss with China,” says Michel Chambon, a researcher at the National University of Shanghai. “The Vatican does need working relationships with the most powerful world powers. You cannot not have a working relationship with China.”

The conflicts over bishop appointments has run parallel with the persecution of Catholic worshipers who don’t accept the government intrusion into Church affairs as well as followers of other Christian sects that are not authorized to preach in the country.

A 2024 report published by ChinaAid, a US-based Christian human rights organization, said at least fifty Protestant Christian pastors had been detained or sentenced in 2023, with fifteen receiving prison terms of at least five years. Supporters of clandestine “house churches,” where the faithful worship in secret, are being charged with operating “illegal businesses.” Punishments include fines, freezing of bank accounts and bans on children taking part in in religious activities.

A report by the Hudson Institute, a US-based think tank, said that ten Catholic bishops and laymen preaching outside government-authorized churches have been jailed over the past decade, some sentenced for several years. In a few cases, they have been imprisoned simply for refusing to join the officially sanctioned Patriotic Church.

In 2024, Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights watchdog, advised the Pope to exit the 2018 accord, which was up for renewal that year. “Even when the agreement was first signed, it was clear that China under President Xi Jinping was highly repressive, including toward religious freedom,” HRW said.

Francis extended the accord for another four years.

Besides Parolin, at least one other papal contender got caught up in the Vatican-China maelstrom. On a visit to Shanghai last year for a conference, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, a Filipino bishop of Chinese descent, acknowledged “problems, misunderstandings and incidents,” in relations between the Catholic Church and China. Nonetheless, he played down the controversies. There was “never any lukewarm-ness or indifference towards the path of the Catholic Church in China,” he said.

Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, an Italian also considered a “papabile,” or a possible choice, visited China in 2013, but was quick to emphasize he was trying find a way to end the Ukraine war, not fix relations with the Forbidden City. “The visit forms as another step of the mission desired by the Pope to sustain humanitarian initiatives and to seek paths that may lead to a just peace,” read a Vatican Press Office statement about Zuppi’s visit.

Is Parolin’s starring role in the China story a poison chalice for his candidacy? His closeness to Francis made him a favorite. Monday’s first day of the conclave ended without someone being named Pope, and it’s a secret whether Parolin’s status as favorite is alive or not.