Rights group wants Vatican action on Chinese repression

A Human Rights Watch report released this month said Chinese authorities are increasing pressure on underground Catholic communities to join the state-controlled official Church while tightening surveillance and travel restrictions on all of China’s estimated 12 million Catholics.

The 2018 agreement between the Vatican and China gave the state-controlled Church a say in naming bishops – a task traditionally exclusive to the pope.

Despite that deal, “Catholics in China face escalating repression that violates their religious freedoms”, said Yalkun Uluyol, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Pope Leo XIV should urgently review the agreement and press Beijing to end the persecution and intimidation of underground churches, clergy and worshippers.”

The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, didn’t immediately respond last week when asked to comment on the report.

In a statement sent to The Associated Press, the Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson’s Office said Human Rights Watch “fabricates all manner of lies and rumours, and lacks any credibility whatsoever”. It added that the government “oversees religious affairs in accordance with the law and protects citizens’ freedom of religious belief and normal religious activities”.

Human Rights Watch said its researchers are not allowed into China, adding that its report is based on input from people outside China “who had first-hand knowledge of Catholic life in China”, as well as experts on religious freedom and Catholicism in China.

Since 2018, according to Human Rights Watch, Chinese authorities have pressured the underground church to join the state-controlled Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association “by arbitrarily detaining, forcibly disappearing . . . and subjecting underground Catholic bishops and priests to house arrest”.

The report described some of those actions, attributed to people who had left China and who were not named in the report.

The government has also intensified ideological control, surveillance, restrictions on religious activities and foreign ties in official churches, according to Human Rights Watch. It said that regulations adopted in December subject foreign travel by Catholic clergy to state approval.

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China raises pressure on underground Catholics to join official church, Human Rights Watch finds (By David Crary/Associated Press/National Catholic Reporter)