Don’t Forget the Catholic Bishops Persecuted by China

P ope Francis remains enthusiastic about the Vatican’s provisional agreement with China on the appointment of bishops. He recently told journalists it is a “good result” of dialogue. Yet repression against the Catholic Church in China has intensified since the deal was signed in 2018.

At least ten Chinese Catholic bishops, all Vatican-approved, are currently in indefinite detention, have disappeared or been forced out of their episcopal posts, or are under open-ended investigation by security police. To evade Western sanctions, the Chinese Communist Party uses less bloody and more hidden methods of coercion against these bishops than the show trials and physical torture of the Mao era.

Baoding’s Bishop James Su Zhimin suffers the longest continuous secret detention: 27 years so far, after he led a large procession to a Marian shrine. The CCP had previously imprisoned and severely tortured him. Wenzhou’s Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin is in secret detention, following an arrest last January. He has been placed in secret detention without due process six times since 2018. Bishop Augustine Cui Tai of Xuanhua diocese was last arrested in April 2021 and placed in secret, indefinite detention for the fourth time since the agreement was signed. This continues a cruel 30-year pattern against him.

Having spent much of the past 30 years in detention, Zhengding diocese’s Bishop Julius Jia Zhiguo was placed under house arrest in 2018. In 2020, police transferred him from the house to a hotel, where his diocese believes he remains. Police recently dismantled the orphanage he ran for 30 years. There, in defiance of state “Sinicization” laws, he allowed children to pray. In May 2021, local police closed the seminary of Xinxiang’s Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu and placed him in indefinite detention at an unknown location. He was arrested soon after having cancer surgery.

Shanghai’s Bishop Joseph Xing Wenzhi, at age 48 and having served as a bishop for six years, went missing in 2011. Last year, in a tacit acknowledgment that he is being persecuted, the Vatican expressed hope for a “just and wise solution” to his case as well as to that of Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin, his successor, who has been detained at a seminary since 2012. In violation of the 2018 agreement, last year the government installed Bishop Shen Bin, who also heads a bishops’ council considered illegitimate by the Vatican, to replace them. The Vatican protested but eventually approved the Shen transfer for “the sake of Church unity.”

Bishop Melchior Shi Hongzhen of Tianjin has been detained for the past 15 years in his parish church compound. He spends his days reading in his study, except when the government has allowed him out to hold last rites. In August, the Vatican reported that China will “officially recognize” the 95-year-old bishop and declared this “a positive fruit of the dialogue.” It’s a bitter fruit, considering his advanced age. The gesture aims to influence public opinion. It is on par with Beijing’s cynical practice of releasing prisoners of conscience once they are on their deathbeds.

As a precondition of the agreement, in 2018, China had Pope Francis demote Bishop Vincent Guo Xijin from his position as Mindong diocese’s principal bishop, and replace him with a government-appointed bishop, who had been excommunicated. Then-auxiliary bishop, Guo faced restrictions in his pastoral ministry and was evicted from his home, forcing him to sleep on the street in wintertime. Later, the government cut off his utilities and arrested and tortured some of his priests. In 2020, he resigned. His whereabouts are unknown.

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, is a prominent figure in the Catholic Church, known worldwide for his public criticism of China’s repressive policies, including against the church. It is widely recognized, including by Pope Francis, that he is being persecuted because of this. Zen explained in his 2016 open letter, “I speak out because I am the voice of the voiceless. In China there is no freedom of expression!” Now, the CCP has stifled his dissent in Hong Kong. In 2022, police arrested him twice. For two months, the nonagenarian faced the daily ordeal of a trial over a minor regulatory infraction, for which he pleaded not guilty, and was convicted and fined. Authorities also began an open-ended investigation of him under a national-security law. Not only could he face a life sentence for the sweeping charge of “colluding with foreign forces”; the diocesan school system could also be at stake, as Beijing’s Ta Kung Pao newspaper threatened.

All nine of the mainland bishops are primarily persecuted for being conscientious objectors from the Catholic Patriotic Association, a Mao-era group founded to control Chinese Catholics. The Vatican does not recognize the group as legitimate. To join, clergy must pledge “independence” from the Holy See. This has been a party goal since the 1950s, when China expelled the papal ambassador and imprisoned for 30 years Shanghai’s Cardinal Ignatius Kung for his refusal to renounce papal authority. “Independence” from the “Successor of Peter” is “incompatible with Catholic doctrine,” Pope Benedict XVI asserted in his 2016 letter establishing principles for the Chinese Catholic Church.

In 2018, China put the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association under the direct control of the CCP’s propaganda arm, the United Front Work Department, and began doubling down on pressing mainland bishops into it. The China–Vatican agreement makes no accommodation for bishops to opt out.

Few outside China know of these ten persecuted bishops. Yet they are an essential part of the faithful leadership needed to ensure that the 400-year-old Chinese Catholic Church continues in communion with Rome and follows Catholic teaching. They stand as a testament to the reality that China represses the Catholic Church along with all its other religions.