Xi ‘Sinicizes’ China’s Catholic Church, with Vatican Approval

T he Vatican has been widely criticized for its 2018 provisional agreement with China. While the agreement’s contents are secret, the Holy See revealed that it gives Beijing a role, along with at least a papal right to veto, in appointing Catholic bishops in China. Due to President Xi Jinping’s “Sinicization” of religion campaign, eight years on, the agreement is even more disastrous than previously thought.

Last month, the agreement saw 44-year-old parish priest Father Andrew Ding appointed archbishop of the megacity of Chongqing. His chief distinction is his position as vice secretary of China’s Council of Catholic Bishops, part of the Chinese Communist Party United Front’s China Patriotic Catholic Association. Another recent appointee, to head Zhangjiakou diocese, is Bishop Joseph Wang, the deputy director of the Patriotic Association of Hebei province. He replaced long-detained Bishop Augustine Cui Tai, whom the Vatican retired without clarifying whether he was free.

The record shows that the CCP is manipulating the agreement to strategically place top leaders of its Patriotic Association to head Chinese dioceses. Most of the 18 bishops appointed under the agreement, plus two whom the pope approved as a CCP precondition for the deal, are high-ranking officials in the association and its committees. Together with Beijing’s bishop, who is the association’s president, they are the vanguard of Xi’s efforts to compel Catholic compliance with Sinicization.

Xi describes Sinicization as “adapting religion to socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Its rules require that sermons center on Xi Jinping Thought, that religious and biblical teachings conform to communist ideology, that houses of worship ban minors, and other restrictions. Sinicization affects all permitted religions, but it is implemented against Catholics principally through the Patriotic Association. The association was established under Mao Zedong to sever the church in China from Rome and bring Catholic clergy under CCP control. Now, this is being done with papal approval.

Association members must pledge “independence, autonomy, self-management and democratic administration of the Church” — that is, renounce papal authority. In a 2007 letter to Chinese Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI wrote that this “declared purpose” of the association and its bishops’ council is “incompatible with Catholic doctrine.” Sinicization turbocharged the association in 2018 by having its control transferred from the state bureaucracy to the CCP’s United Front Work Department, and all clergy were pressed to join. To preserve the agreement, the Vatican went along with this, in new pastoral guidelines, though it considers the association illegitimate.

Some examples show the episcopacy’s changing profile:

• Archbishop Joseph Li Shan, the head of Beijing’s diocese since 2007, is president of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and deputy chairman of its bishops’ council.
• Bishop Joseph Shen Bin, Shanghai, is the president of the Patriotic Association’s bishops’ council and vice president of the Patriotic Association. In 2023, Beijing unilaterally transferred him to China’s most important diocese. Pope Francis approved the move three months later, with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin explaining that this was for “the greater good of the diocese.”
• Bishop Joseph Huang, Shantou diocese, served as the vice president of the Patriotic Association and a National People’s Congress deputy, where he voted to include Xi’s Thought in China’s constitution. In 2011, Pope Benedict publicly excommunicated him for being “illicitly” ordained a bishop, but in 2018, as a CCP precondition for the agreement, Pope Francis revoked the order and appointed him to replace Shantou’s papally approved Bishop Peter Zhuang.
• Bishop Vincent Zhan Silu, Mindong diocese, is the chairman of the Supervision Committee of the Patriotic Association and the Bishops’ Council. In 2018, Pope Francis lifted his excommunication as an agreement precondition. Zhan replaced papally approved underground Bishop Vincent Guo, who was demoted to auxiliary, later pressured to resign, and is now reportedly locked inside a church compound.
• Bishop Thaddeus Wang, Zhengzhou, ordained bishop in 2024, is director of Henan Province’s Patriotic Association.
• Bishop Joseph Chang, Chifeng, ordained a bishop in 2026, is director of Chifeng’s Patriotic Association.

Patriotic Association leaders ensure that priests are enthusiastic propagandists and indoctrinators of Sinicization. The association was the reason that Shanghai’s Cardinal Ignatius Kung was imprisoned for 30 years — he refused to head it. Shanghai bishops are still persecuted for rejecting the association and its noxious pledge: Shanghai’s Bishop Thaddeus Ma has been forcibly detained in solitary confinement at a seminary for 14 years. His predecessor, Bishop Joseph Xing, disappeared 15 years ago. Bishop Shen, who replaced them, is known for stridently spouting CCP propaganda: “We must . . . adhere to the principles of independence and autonomy in running the Church, adhere to the principle of democracy in running the Church, and adhere to the direction of the Sinicization of the Catholic Church in China,” he declared in a 2023 interview with the diocesan magazine. In a 2022 online conference with Hong Kong clergy, titled “Catholic Sinicized Theology Exchange,” he stressed that the Chinese church was becoming “gradually determined to follow the path of Sinicization that is compatible with the socialist society in terms of pastoral care, evangelization and formation.” He added that their dioceses need to “jointly promote the translation and interpretation of the Bible” being undertaken under CCP supervision.

Other association leaders sound similar. In 2023, Bishop Li Shan led Hong Kong clergy in prayers that the “Chinese Church will be able to promote the work of evangelization and spirituality along the direction of sinicization.” In 2019, Bishop Zhan marched 33 diocesan priests to a socialism center for “reeducation,” declaring, “to carry out the Sinicization of religion with determination, we will continue to follow a path that conforms to socialist society,” reported the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions’ outlet AsiaNews. In December 2025, Bishop Francis Li Jianlin directed that a Henan Catholic church be padlocked with a notice that it “violated relevant regulations by allowing minors to enter the church and play musical instruments.” Heading Henan’s Committee for Catholic Ecclesiastical Affairs, he personally signed a directive banning all youth from church. AsiaNews quoted a dismayed Chinese Catholic who commented that police weren’t needed anymore; churchmen are doing their work for them.

Meanwhile, ten Vatican-loyal bishops have been detained, disappeared, demoted, or forcibly retired. In addition, detained Bishop Julius Jia died last year at a clinic under police custody, as have three other elderly underground bishops since the agreement.

Catholic evangelization in China is suffering. A 2023 Pew study finds that “all available sources suggest that China’s Catholic population is not growing.” For years, the Holy Spirit Center in Hong Kong has estimated there are between 10 million and 12 million Catholics, with half in the underground. By contrast, Fenggang Yang, the renowned China sociologist at Purdue University, wrote to me in an October 8 email that he estimates the number of practicing, believing Protestants at 100 million and rising. Most of the extraordinary Protestant growth in recent years has been in the underground, where, to escape CCP surveillance and control, worshippers meet in unauthorized venues, house churches, or even just remotely. As the Vatican no longer approves appointments of Chinese underground bishops, some are questioning what the future holds for the 400-year-old Catholic Church of China.

Of course, not all association bishops are CCP stalwarts, but many being appointed to head dioceses are. On September 14, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization’s Fides ran an essay by Chinese priest Paul Han. He described a future Sinicized Church that is unrecognizable:

“True Sinicization of Christianity is not about reducing the Gospel to ethical rules and institutional transmission, nor is it about reducing Chinese culture to religious ornamentation. Rather, it calls for the creation of new ways of understanding the mysteries of both the cosmos and human existence through sustained dialogue and the mutual enrichment of the world’s great spiritual traditions. . . . If ‘Sinicization of religion’ remains merely at the institutional level, it will only be a stage in history; only when it becomes a process of cultural creation, spiritual renewal, and dialogue among civilizations can it truly become a significant marker of the Chinese Church’s maturation.”

In short, China’s Catholic Church will wither away if the Vatican doesn’t change course.