China said Tuesday it is willing to keep working with the Holy See to improve relations, a day after Pope Francis — the architect of a contentious Vatican deal with Beijing — died at age 88.
“In recent years, China and the Vatican have maintained constructive ties and developed friendly exchanges,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a press conference. “The Chinese side is willing to continue working with the Vatican to promote the continued improvement of China-Vatican relations.”
The Vatican and China have had no official diplomatic ties since 1951, and Catholics in the country remain split between a state-controlled church and underground congregations loyal to Rome.
In 2018, Francis approved a secretive agreement understood to allow China, an officially atheist state, to nominate bishops, as long as the pope held veto power. The deal was renewed in 2020, 2022 and again last year, for four more years.
Critics say the deal — the specific contents of which are not clear — handed too much control to the Chinese Communist Party. Cardinal Joseph Zen even warned the agreement could “kill” the underground church.
But a Vatican statement said the renewal followed “appropriate consultation and assessment” and was “for the benefit of the Catholic Church in China and the Chinese people as a whole.”
Rusty Reno, editor of First Things journal, said the secret deal was par for the course for a Jesuit, the religious order to which Francis famously belonged.
“No surprise there; secrecy is the ideal métier for a Jesuit, allowing for all matters to be dealt with behind closed doors, relying on diplomacy and intrigue,” Mr. Reno wrote on Monday, adding that Francis may have had his own long-term reasoning for working behind the scenes with the Chinese government. “If China becomes a Catholic nation in the next hundred years, Francis will have been vindicated in his tactics.”
China’s recognition of the Vatican’s unchecked power over nominations remains unlikely, experts say, especially while the Holy See maintains diplomatic ties with Taiwan, an autonomous territory that China claims as its own.
Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute noted that repression has only worsened since the deal began.
“Beijing targeted these 10 bishops after they opposed the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which requires its members to pledge independence from the Holy See,” she wrote in a report for the institute last year.
Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu was arrested in 2021 while recovering from cancer and remains detained, according to the Catholic News Agency. In other cases, China has installed bishops in dioceses not recognized by the Vatican or has reassigned them without approval.
Still, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said Rome is “open to developing aspects of the agreement.”
Francis had long avoided direct criticism of Beijing, a move among many others that Mr. Reno described as “politically clever.” In 2022, the pope said talks with China were “going well,” though “not as fast as others might prefer because the Chinese are a people of ’infinite patience.’”
“I don’t want to describe China as antidemocratic because it is such a complex country, with its own rhythms,” he said.
When asked whether Chinese officials would attend Francis’ funeral in Rome on Saturday, Mr. Guo said he had no information. Taiwan’s president, however, confirmed a special envoy would be sent.
