Human Rights Watch: Vatican-China deal has aided religious persecution
The group has renewed its appeal for Pope Leo XIV to take action on the Sino-Vatican deal and ‘end the persecution.’
(PerMariam) — The watchdog agency Human Rights Watch (HRW) has warned that the controversial 2018 deal between China and the Vatican has “helped the Chinese government to pressure underground Catholic communities to join the official church.”
According to a detailed new report issued by HRW, the Chinese state is only increasing its persecution of underground Catholics, and is doing so aided by the framework of the 2018 deal between Beijing and the Holy See regarding the appointment of bishops.
“The 2018 Holy See-China agreement on bishops has helped the Chinese government to pressure underground Catholic communities to join the official church,” HRW wrote on April 15.
Having been signed in 2018 on a provisional basis, the secretive Sino-Vatican deal’s specific details remain undisclosed: a peculiar air of mystery surrounds them. It has since been renewed a number of times, most recently in 2024 for a period of four years.
The agreement is believed to recognize the state-approved version of the Catholic Church and allows the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to appoint bishops. The Pope apparently maintains a veto power although in practice it is the CCP that has control. It also allegedly allows for the removal and replacement of legitimate bishops by CCP-approved bishops.
The secrecy of the text has been one of the oft-raised issues about the entire affair. But its chief author, Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin has previously defended this aspect, attesting in 2023 that such secrecy was “because it has not yet been finally approved.”
HRW has already urged Pope Leo XIV to repeal the deal, and in releasing their report they have renewed this appeal. “Pope Leo XIV should urgently review the agreement and press Beijing to end the persecution and intimidation of underground churches, clergy, and worshipers.”
According to HRW, the deal has “facilitated repression of Catholics in China.”
One former Chinese resident told HRW that the 2018 Sino-Vatican deal “was used by the Chinese Communist Party as the most intelligent weapon to legally destroy underground churches.”
“In practice,” the anonymous source stated, “they arrested priests and bishops from the underground churches and told them: ‘The Vatican has ordered you to join the Patriotic Association.’”
This has led many Catholic clergy into the dilemma representing that of the days of persecution in the Roman Empire or in Protestant Reformation England: “join the Patriotic Association and betray their faith or refuse to join and lose their livelihood and face arrest.”
The process of “Sinicization” has long been China’s tool to enforce state-control over the practice of religion. Some have sought to defend the concept, including the current Cardinal-archbishop of Hong Kong, Stephen Chow. But, sources interviewed by HRW said that for China “Sinicization” is “about imposing Chinese Communist Party ideology on religious belief.”
Day to day life does not have to entail abduction or torture in order to lead to persecution – although that does happen. An insider who spoke to HRW commented how one priest was prevented from having any banking, phone sim cards or passports, and hence has “no means of survival and can barely make ends meet for even a day or two.”
Pontifical charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has also highlighted how the Sinicization is being utilized to crush non-approved faith especially amongst the young. “All this has led to a de facto ban on all religious practice and education for anyone under 18 years of age in China, thus depriving religious communities of their youth development efforts and posing an existential threat to their future,” ACN reported in the autumn.
This element is something which HRW also documented, with numerous sources attesting that the Chinese government was working hard to control the dissemination of religious education to children, including by stating that parents “must not organize … home-based religious education to instill religious ideas to their children.”
Recent legislation also implements greater state control over the travel of clergy, thus allowing the government to limit international access and any likelihood of whistleblowing. Coming into force this spring, the new rules see clergy and religious having to surrender their passports and travel documents to state officials, any anyone wishing to travel abroad for an “official overseas assignment” must submit a request for the passport and include a document approving the request.
Commenting on this, one China expert interviewed by HRW stated that as a result, “groups must not have any relations with foreign churches or entities because that is seen as a national security issue. The Holy See, and the Catholic Church represents a target [of persecution.]”
Clergy who have resisted China’s efforts to force them into the schismatic, state-approved church have been subject to abductions, forced arrest and indoctrination. Locals are bribed with financial rewards in return for reporting Underground house-churches to the authorities.
Speaking to Bitter Winter an Underground priest attested to the loyalty of Catholics to Rome rather than to Communism: “We endure suffering due to our unwavering loyalty to Rome and the Church and our refusal to submit to bishops who prioritize allegiance to the CCP over fidelity to the Pope.”
Bitter Winter described a renewed crackdown on religious venues last spring as having “reached alarming proportions,” after a series of police raids on Underground Church places of worship led to nearly all of them being closed in spring 2025.
The late Pope Francis and Cdl. Parolin repeatedly and firmly defended the deal, with Parolin doing so as recently as this month. China expert Steven Mosher has previously described the deal as an action which was “perhaps the most controversial of a papacy dogged by controversy.”
Now, according to HRW, “the Chinese government’s rights violations against Catholics contravene the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and violate the rights to freedoms of religion and belief, expression, association, and movement, among other rights.”
Nor is HRW alone in its assessment of the Sino-Vatican deal’s impact on the Underground Church and Catholic wishing to be faithful to Rome.
Numerous China experts and Catholic prelates abroad have criticized the deal, and the emeritus bishop of Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen has described the agreement as an “incredible betrayal” of China’s Catholics and accused the Vatican of “selling out” Chinese Catholics.
Indeed, shortly before his demise, the late Cardinal Dominik Duka, O.P. warned that “the Holy See’s unbalanced diplomatic policy towards the Chinese regime can damage the Catholic Church itself.” Duka warned that the “Catholic Church can be perceived as collaborationist, especially if it is true that the text of the agreement remains secret and only troubling information leaks to the public.”
The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China stated its 2020 report that the increased religious persecution witnessed in China was “of an intensity not seen since the Cultural Revolution.” The Commission described the abuse as a direct consequence of the deal, and former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo notably slated the deal in September 2020, writing that “it’s clear that the Sino-Vatican agreement has not shielded Catholics from the Party’s depredations, to say nothing of the Party’s horrific treatment of Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong devotees, and other religious believers.”
HRW sent a copy of its report to the Vatican and the Chinese government, but has received no comment from either.