Holy See and Hanoi Announce an Agreement

The government of Vietnam and the Holy See have reached an agreement on the status of the Pope’s permanent representative and his office in the country. The official news was given by a bilateral communiqué issued by the Holy See at the end of the visit to the Vatican by Vietnam’s President Vo Van Thuong, who met with Pope Francis and Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin.

The agreement, which opens the door to the permanent presence of a representative of the Holy See in Hanoi, thus marks a qualitative leap in diplomatic relations, and brings an end to negotiations that had been ongoing for years.

The Holy See’s representative for Vietnam until now has been Bishop Marek Zalewski, nuncio to Singapore, who was authorized to make visits to the country. The agreement will allow the reopening of a Vatican representation in the country, nearly 50 years after the expulsion of the apostolic delegate in Vietnam in 1975 by the communist government.

“Both sides expressed their great satisfaction with the considerable progress in relations between Vietnam and the Holy See and the positive contributions of the Vietnamese Catholic community,” the joint communiqué said.

The two parties also expressed their confidence that the resident papal representative will fulfill the role and the mandate conferred by the Agreement, that he will support the Vietnamese Catholic community in its commitments, in the spirit of the law and always inspired by the Magisterium of the Church, to realize the vocation to “accompany the nation,” to be “good Catholics and good citizens,” and to contribute to the development of the country, while the representative will be a bridge to advance relations between Vietnam and the Holy See,” he said.

The explicit reference to being “good Catholics and good citizens” is an obsession of communist regimes. This formula has already appeared several times in the confrontation between Rome and Beijing: the question of loyalty to the homeland as opposed to “foreign influences” is a point of fixation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The latter has always insisted, through the Patriotic Association of Chinese Catholics, on the principle of the “autonomy” of Chinese Catholics. Benedict XVI, in his Letter to Chinese Catholics of 2007, stated that the Church teaches the faithful to be good citizens in their country, but asks the authorities not to interfere in matters of faith and discipline of the Church.

It should also be recalled that “the opening of a permanent liaison office of the Holy See” – similar to that planned with Vietnam – is one of the requests made publicly to the People’s Republic of China by Cardinal Parolin, in his recent interview with the Vatican media, on the subject of the appointment of Joseph Shen Bin as Bishop of Shanghai, after the CCP had presented the Holy See with a fait accompli.

There remains, however, an important ambiguity: how can one be a good Catholic citizen in a communist country, whose system is “intrinsically perverse,” and which only seeks to subdue all opposition, and especially religion?