China: Who Appoints Bishops, Rome or Beijing?

For more information, refer to the Bitter Winter website of February 5, where we learn: "Once again, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced that it had 'elected' a bishop three months before the Pope appointed him. The papal mandate was not mentioned during the consecration ceremony." 

"We see the following scheme at work, which is unlikely to correspond to the deal [the 2018 agreement, renewed for four years in 2024]: first, the CCP ‘elects’ a bishop and publicly announces the news. Second, for several months, there is no reaction from the Holy See, which strongly suggests it had not previously been informed of the election.”

"Third, after a hiatus of months, the Pope ‘appoints’ the bishop—whose election the CCP had already announced months earlier. Fourth, a consecration ceremony is held where the papal mandate is not mentioned at all, as if it were irrelevant, while a letter of approval is read by the ‘Bishops' Conference’ of the Patriotic Catholic Church, which is not recognized as such by Rome.”

In the January 30 issue of Settimo Cielo, Sandro Magister offered a very informative comparative analysis: "If one just analyzes how Beijing and Rome give word of each new appointment, it is easy to note significant elements of difference, in the first place the total silence on the Chinese side regarding the Pope and the role he plays, as if he did not even exist.”

"Regarding the new Bishop of Lüliang, Anthony Ji Weizhong, 52, ordained on January 20, the Vatican bulletin published on the same day that his appointment was made by the Pope on October 28, 2024. But the contemporaneous press release issued by the official website in Mandarin of the ‘Catholic Church in China’ is silent on the papal appointment.”

It "relates instead that Ji 'was elected bishop on July 19, 2024.' As if to say, reading the two press releases together, that it took more than three months for Rome to digest the appointment unilaterally decided by Beijing.”

"The Chinese statement does not specify by whom or how the new bishop was elected. But, it does cite, as usual, a 'letter of approval' from the Chinese episcopal conference, a spurious body never recognized by the Holy See but only by the Beijing authorities.”

"And it provides a detailed list – which the Vatican bulletin omits – of the bishops who took part in the ordination ceremony, with their respective roles in the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, the regime's main organ of control over the Church, which is also the true proprietor of the website of the ‘Catholic Church in China.’”

And he provides a damning clarification for the Roman authorities: " Moreover, the Vatican bulletin – but not the Chinese press release – relates that on October 28, 2024, the same day as the appointment of the new bishop, the Pope also proceeded with the erection of the new diocese of Luliang, with a precise description of its geographical extension, and with the suppression of the previous diocese of Fenyang, established by Pius XII in 1948.”

“Several times before, after the signing of the agreement in 2018, the Holy See has had to redraw the borders of one or another Chinese diocese, matching them to the administrative borders as the Beijing authorities would have them. The final result will be the reduction of the number of dioceses from 135, as in the old Vatican mapping, to just under a hundred, about a third of which are still without a bishop, roughly as they were seven years ago before the signing of the agreement.”

Mitered Apparatchiks

Sandro Magister points to another appointment: "that of the Coadjutor Bishop of Beijing, Matthew Zhen Xuebin, 55, made public on the day of his episcopal ordination, October 25, 2024.”

“The Vatican bulletin gives the date of August 28, 2024, for his appointment by the Pope, left out altogether, as always, in the Chinese press release, which instead backdates his ‘election’ in China, with the inevitable letter of approval from the episcopal conference, to March 21, 2024, a good five months before Francis – the Vatican bulletin says – ‘approved his candidacy.’”

The Vaticanist astutely notes: "The most surprising element of Zhen’s appointment is that Li Shan, the bishop of Beijing in office, is 60 years old, just five years older than he. The 'coadjutor,' in fact, is an auxiliary bishop with the guarantee of succession as head of the same diocese, and this role is usually assigned when the incumbent is old or ill and the transfer of office is thought to be imminent.”

“But Li is also president of the Patriotic Association and vice-president of the episcopal conference, and, according to some sources, it was he himself who asked to be appointed coadjutor to Zhen, having been for some time his close associate in heading the diocese (it, too, is properly an archdiocese, but no longer qualifies as such even by the Holy See).”

"The fact is that this appointment secures the diocese of China's political capital for years, if not decades, in the hands of two staunch supporters of the regime.”

“Just like the diocese of the economic capital, Shanghai, where in 2023 the communist regime installed, on April 4, one of the bishops most assimilated into the party, Joseph Shen Bin, 55, without even giving due notice to the Holy See, which reacted with a declaration of protest but three months later, on July 15, had to swallow the affront with the pope’s signature on the act of appointment.” 

Sandro Magister's last observation, and not the least: "The bishops charged each time with carrying out episcopal ordinations and supervising diocesan installations are evidently chosen by the Chinese authorities without any coordination with Rome, which in fact never reports their names. And the priests, nuns, and faithful admitted to these rites are also carefully selected.”

"And woe to anyone who disregards the program of the ceremony, as happened in 2012 at the cathedral of Shanghai, when the new bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin, just ordained, dissociated himself from the Patriotic Association to reaffirm his full fidelity to the Church of Rome, and for this was arrested and confined to the seminary of Sheshan, where he still lives without any role, despite the public act of submission to the regime that he signed in 2015.”

He concludes: "In short, from a synoptic reading of the press releases issued by the Holy See and the ‘Catholic Church in China’ with each new episcopal appointment, it is clear that the one running the game is the regime in Beijing."