On the contrary, I remain more convinced today than ever that the deal is very profoundly naïve, wrong, immoral, and dangerous.

Yet in the past two years, nothing has made me think that my skepticism about the deal was misplaced. I have grown up as a Catholic with him and I want to support him. I love his emphasis on mercy and forgiveness, and I came into the church just 11 days after he was elected to the papacy. Indeed, I am not-other than on this issue-a critic of Francis. I am, after all, only a 7-year-old Catholic, having been received into the church on Palm Sunday 2013 in Myanmar by Cardinal Charles Bo, and I didn’t come into the church to take on the Vatican hierarchy, let alone the pope. The text was, and remains, secret, so no one other than its negotiators and the pope know the details.Īnd the result was to give an atheist dictatorship a decision-making role in the appointment of bishops.īut two years ago, while I expressed my skepticism, I held out for the possibility that I was wrong and that the pope was right. Everything about the deal was wrong.įirstly, the timing: in the midst of the worst crackdown on religion since the Cultural Revolution.

Priests from Yujiang diocese, under surveillance, have been forbidden from “engaging in any religious activity in the capacity of clergy” after they refused to join the regime’s so-called “patriotic church,” and Bishop Lu Xinping was barred from celebrating Mass.

Only last week in Jiangxi province, dissenting Catholic priests have been placed under house arrest, in breach of an agreement to protect clergy from coercion. When it was announced, I expressed concerns-but also tried to give a pope whom I admire the benefit of the doubt.Ĭhina is already breaking the deal. It had been a long time coming, and I and others tried to warn of the dangers before the deal was done. Two years ago, the Vatican signed a provisional agreement with Beijing, valid for two years.

And at a time when that regime is intensifying repression of religion-including Catholics-in China, Pope Francis is renewing an accord with Beijing that has yielded no benefits yet save for President Xi Jinping and only disunity and suffering for the Catholic Church. At a time when much of the rest of the world is starting to wake up to the repression, mendacity, and dangers of the Chinese Communist Party regime, the Vatican is getting even deeper in bed with it.

The vatican tapes catholic review