By Liz Yore for Breitbart | Image from Breitbart
For over five years, the Vatican and Chinese Communist Party negotiated back and forth to hammer out an agreement about the appointment and validity of Catholic Bishops in Communist China. Since 1957, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) created and imposed a faux Catholic Patriotic Church with its own seminaries, priests, churches and bishops chosen by the party. Today, Chinese Catholics are divided between this two-tiered system: the underground Church, faithful to the Vatican and Magisterium, and the Patriotic Church of the CCP. Pope Francis’ Vatican waded into this political and religious maelstrom. Francis was way over his head.
It is painfully obvious that the give and take resulted in more, rather than less, religious persecution for Catholics and Christians in China. The Vatican gave everything away and got nothing in return; the Communists Chinese took everything and gave nothing. They not only secured apostolic power from the Holy See – they finagled papal silence over the dastardly deeds of the CCP. No wonder the details of the pact are still kept secret!
