A pope who worked to regularize the Church in China

Apr 21, 2025

VATICAN: China Jesuit Province interviewed Pope Francis in 2024, marking the May 24 feast day of our Lady Sheshan, the celebrated Marian title among Catholics across China.

"Yes, I really want to" go to China, Francis said when the interviewer, Jesuit Father Pedro Chia, asked about the possibility of the pope visiting the communist nation. 

He also wished to visit the Marian shrine of Sheshan in Shanghai and meet with the bishops and the People of God, "who are faithful, they are faithful," according to the interview published on the province's social media channel in August. 

Yet, Francis died without visiting China, making it a nation where no pope has ever set foot, despite it having an estimated 10 million Catholics divided into the state-run patriotic Church and the Vatican-aligned underground Church. 

From early on in his pontificate, Francis followed up the already-initiated work to unite these divided churches that functioned in a complex situation — living in dioceses recognized and unrecognized by the Vatican, under bishops ordained with and without papal mandate. 

In the absence of a formal diplomatic relationship between Beijing and Rome, Francis faced challenges in dealing with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as he sought to end the double governance of the Church in China. 

Completes quarter of work
In 2018, five years after he became pope, the Vatican signed a secretive two-year provisional pact to appoint bishops in China through mutual agreement by Beijing and the Holy See.

The deal outlived its provisional two-year period to get renewed in 2020 and in 2022 for two more years; in 2024, they renewed it for another four years. 

In February 2022, six months before the end of the deal's second renewal, the Vatican pulled its representatives out of Hong Kong and Taiwan, which the media interpreted as the Holy See's preparations for establishing diplomatic ties with China. 

Media speculation was based on the fact that China considers both Hong Kong and Taiwan to be integral parts, and a country maintaining diplomatic links with these entities cannot have bilateral ties with China. 

But the Vatican under Francis repeatedly said the deal was "pastoral in nature," and its only concern was to have a regularized Church, where all Catholics freely practice faith under a unified Vatican-recognized leadership. 

Since the deal was signed, Francis was able to appoint at least 12 bishops and regularize the appointment of another 15 bishops, whose positions were earlier contested. It would mean regularising at least 25 percent of the Catholic leadership in China, published records show. 

Criticized for silence
Francis worked to end the division in the Church and encouraged the so-called "underground Church" to follow government norms and register their churches and pastors with government systems. 

Critics described this move and the deal itself as selling-out "underground Catholics," who remained loyal to the Vatican despite facing state persecution. 

The critics also argued that the China-Vatican agreement was a Chinese ploy to buy the Vatican's silence on rights abuses, including a genocidal crackdown on the Uyghur minority and, repression of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, and a crackdown on religious groups, including Christians in China.

Rights groups and activists also criticized Francis for his unprecedented silence despite China's crackdown on dissent and dismantling of freedoms and rights in Hong Kong after 2019, saying it was due to the Sino-Vatican agreement. 

Prioritizing Asia
China is "a promise and a hope" for the Catholic Church, he told journalists during an in-flight press conference while flying back to the Vatican after the four-nation Asian tour last September.

"A great country. I admire China. I respect China. It's a country with a millennial culture, with a capacity for dialogue and understanding that goes beyond other systems of democracy."

"China for me is an illusion, in the sense that I want to visit China," Francis said.

Francis died without having the chance to visit China, but he did establish a firm system to unify and regularize the Church in China and facilitated enough capacity for the Church in Asia to claim its rightful place in the global Church. 

Francis' focus on Asia was evident in his choosing cardinals from the continent, particularly from some areas that were not considered cardinal seats. 

The last consistory in December 2024 included five Asian cardinals — Tarcisius Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo, Pablo Virgilio David of the Philippines, Paskalis Bruno Syukur of Bogor in Indonesia, Dominique Joseph Mathieu of Tehran, and George Jacob Koovakad of India. 

During his first consistory in 2015, he surprised many by naming cardinals from places such as Myanmar, Bangladesh, Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore, besides Manila. They were cardinals Charles Maung Bo, Patrick D'Rozario, Cornelius Sim, Anthony Soter Fernandez, William Goh, and Jose Advincula, respectively--ucanews.com