The Church in Contemporary China (1949-2026)

A growing but fragile Church

In the mid-twentieth century, the Catholic Church in China was the heir of four centuries of missions, from the arrival of Matteo Ricci in Macao in 1582 and in Beijing in 1601, to the great missionary effort of the nineteenth century. It had survived the Chinese Rites Controversy (1645-1742, see the dedicated article), the Boxer persecution (1900) which claimed more than 30,000 Chinese Catholic martyrs^[5], and the civil war between Nationalists and Communists.

In 1949, on the eve of Mao Zedong's victory, the Chinese Catholic community numbered about 3.3 million faithful out of a total population of about 540 million — that is 0.6% of the country. It had 137 ecclesiastical circumscriptions — 20 archdioceses, 79 dioceses and 38 apostolic prefectures, erected by Quotidie Nos on 11 April 1946^[6] — 5,800 priests (nearly half of them foreigners: Italians of the PIME, Frenchmen of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, Americans of Maryknoll, Germans, Irishmen, Dutchmen), nearly 200 religious orders and congregations, and an impressive network of works: three Catholic universities (Aurora in Shanghai, Fu Jen in Beijing, Tsin Ku in Tianjin), 254 secondary colleges, nearly 2,000 primary schools, 216 hospitals, leper houses, orphanages^[7]. These pre-1949 figures are a contested historical estimate, established without any official census of the time. The Chinese Catholic network was, at that date, one of the most densely structured in the missionary world.

The letter opens with the wish that gives it its title — Cupimus imprimis impensam profiteri vobis benevolentiam Nostram erga Sinarum gentem universam (“We desire above all to assure you of our deep goodwill towards the whole Chinese people”) — and concludes with the words of Tertullian which Pius XII makes his own: semen est sanguis christianorum (“the blood of Christians is a seed”)^[8].

The 1946 nunciature and the indigenous episcopate

The great transformation of the 1920s-1940s was the sinicization of the clergy: in 1926, Pius XI personally consecrated in Saint Peter's in Rome six Chinese bishops, breaking the colonial custom that reserved the episcopate for European missionaries. In 1939, Pius XII definitively abrogated, by the instruction Plane compertum est (8 December 1939), the old condemnations of Confucian rites, allowing Chinese faithful to take part in the civil honours paid to Confucius and to the ancestors^[9]. On 11 April 1946, Pius XII formally erected the Catholic hierarchy in China, creating for the first time a genuinely indigenous diocesan structure — twenty archdioceses, seventy-nine dioceses, and thirty-eight apostolic prefectures^[10]. On 18 February 1946 (public consistory^[11]), Thomas Tien Ken-sin, vicar apostolic of Qingdao, was created the first Chinese cardinal in history. In the same year, Archbishop Antonio Riberi, born in Monte Carlo (Monaco), became apostolic internuncio in China — the first accredited diplomatic representative of the Holy See to the Chinese government.

The momentum was immense. It was cut short three years later.

The proclamation of 1 October 1949

On 1 October 1949, from the rostrum of the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen) in Beijing, Mao Zedong proclaimed the foundation of the People's Republic of China. The civil war against Chiang Kai-shek ended with the flight of the Kuomintang to Taiwan. The new regime did not immediately declare war on the Church. The provisional Constitution of 29 September 1949 (“Common Programme of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference”) theoretically guaranteed “freedom of religious belief”^[12]. But the ideological context was clear: every foreign power on Chinese soil would be eradicated. And the Catholic Church, in the Maoist reading grid, was by definition an agent of “foreign reaction” — the Vatican, the missions, the schools, the foundations.

The “Three Autonomies” (1950)

As early as 1950, the new regime's religious administration launched, with the Protestant leader Wu Yaozong, known as Y. T. Wu (1893-1979), the doctrine of the “Three Autonomies” (sanzi: zi zhi, zi yang, zi chuan — self-government, self-support, self-propagation). Born in the Protestant world — Wu wrote in 1950 the Christian Manifesto which founded the patriotic Three-Self Movement — and applied to all confessions, it demanded that the Churches of China break every bond of authority, finance and mission with foreign countries. On the Catholic side, on 1 December 1950, in Guangyuan (Sichuan), a few Catholics signed a separate text, the “Manifesto for the reform of Chinese Catholicism”, approving the principle of the Three Autonomies, immediately relayed by the official press as the start of a massive rupture^[13].

The Catholic pastoral response was strong. Archbishop Riberi, the apostolic internuncio, had a circular letter distributed in October 1951, according to historiographical tradition, forbidding Catholics to join any religious association outside Roman communion^[14]. The Chinese bishops, still in place, massively supported the nuncio's position.

The expulsion of Archbishop Antonio Riberi (September 1951)

The State reacted. At the beginning of September 1951, Archbishop Antonio Riberi was declared persona non grata in Nanjing by the Communist authorities, accused of “espionage” and “interference in China's internal affairs”. He was expelled manu militari across the Lo Wu border (Hong Kong) in September 1951^[15]. With him ended the Holy See's diplomatic presence on the mainland.

Between 1951 and 1955, more than 5,500 foreign missionaries were successively expelled, after show trials, espionage accusations or simple administrative notifications. Most left via the Hong Kong border crossings, sometimes after months of forced house arrest^[16]. The property of the Church — schools, hospitals, universities, land, seminaries — was confiscated for the benefit of the State or of the CPCA in formation. The three Catholic universities disappeared: Fu Jen in Beijing was nationalised in 1952, Aurora in Shanghai in 1952, Tsin Ku in Tianjin in 1951.

The toll: a decimated clergy

At the beginning of 1954, all that remained in People's China was about a hundred foreign priests, almost all in prison or under house arrest. The Chinese clergy — about 2,500 priests — was scattered, watched, divided between loyalty to the Holy See (the overwhelming majority) and the temptation of accommodation with the regime promoted by a few local figures (in particular in the diocese of Tianjin and later in Shanghai)^[17].

Cupimus Imprimis (18 January 1952): “We desire above all”

Faced with the institutional collapse and the expulsion of the missionaries, Pius XII wrote on 18 January 1952 the apostolic letter Cupimus Imprimis, the first magisterial act addressed specifically to Chinese Catholics under the new regime^[18]. The pope recalled that communion with the Successor of Peter is not subjection to a foreign power, but the very essence of Catholicism: every Christian community that broke this unity, he wrote in Latin, would wither “veluti palmes a sua vite abscissus” — like the branch cut off from the vine (cf. Jn 15:6).

The doctrinal issue was set: fidelity to the pope is not a political opinion, it is the condition of apostolicity. Cupimus Imprimis directly prepared the two encyclicals that would follow.

Ad Sinarum Gentem (7 October 1954)

On 7 October 1954, on the feast of the Holy Rosary, Pius XII published Ad Sinarum Gentem, an encyclical addressed “to the archbishop, the bishops, the clergy and the people of China”^[19]. The pope explicitly condemned the doctrine of the Three Autonomies in its religious application: self-government separated from Rome, self-support erected into rupture, and above all “self-propagation” which claimed that the Chinese mission could do without universal communion. The text carefully distinguished between legitimate patriotism, which every Chinese Catholic must cultivate, and religious nationalism, which isolates a particular Church from the universal Body.

Pius XII taught that Chinese Catholics yield to no one in ardent love of their homeland, while condemning the principles of the Three Autonomies aimed at establishing a Church separated from the unity founded by Christ: any community that thus broke unity, he warned, would lose its vitality like the branch cut off from the vine^[20].

The foundation of the CPCA (30 July 1957)

Three years later, on 30 July 1957, under the aegis of the Bureau of Religious Affairs, 241 Chinese Catholics were summoned to Beijing and founded the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (Zhongguo Tianzhujiao Aiguo Hui, CPCA). This structure presented itself as a movement of “love of country and of the Church” (in reality of love of country against the pope). It claimed total autonomy from Rome, including in the appointment of bishops^[21].

The expression “patriotic Church” would henceforth be used to designate this parallel structure. Strictly speaking, it was not schismatic in the classical sense (the faithful continued to celebrate the same Mass, to confess the same Creed, to formally recognise the pope in the liturgy); but it was canonically irregular: its bishops were consecrated without a pontifical mandate, its statutes proclaimed independence from the Holy See, and its hierarchy was de facto under the control of the Communist Party's Bureau of Religious Affairs.

The first episcopal consecrations without mandate (April 1958)

On 13 April 1958, in Saint Joseph's Cathedral in Hankou, the first two episcopal ordinations without pontifical mandate in the recent history of the Church in China took place: Bernardine Dong Guangqing (Hankou) and Yuan Wenhua (Wuchang) were consecrated by Chinese bishops who were themselves excommunicated latae sententiae^[22]. The consecration was canonically valid (apostolic succession preserved) but gravely illicit: it entailed, in accordance with canon 2370 of the then in force 1917 Code — which struck episcopal consecration without apostolic mandate with a latae sententiae suspension (“ipso iure suspensi sunt, donec Sedes Apostolica eos dispensaverit”), a penalty raised to latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See by canon 1382 of the 1983 Code — and confirmed by Pius XII for the Chinese case, latae sententiae excommunication of consecrators and consecrated alike. In simple words: this exclusion from the communion of the Church falls by itself as soon as the act is done, like a door closing on its own, without any judge needing to pronounce it.

Ad Apostolorum Principis (29 June 1958)

On 29 June 1958, feast of Saints Peter and Paul, Pius XII published his third encyclical on China, Ad Apostolorum Principis^[23]. The text was harsher than the two previous ones. It declared gravely illicit — “criminal and sacrilegious” — the episcopal consecrations carried out without pontifical mandate, denounced the “patriotic” movement as an attempt to found a “national Church” cut off from the Successor of Peter, and confirmed the latae sententiae excommunication — the one that applies by itself, as explained above — incurred by consecrator and consecrated alike.

“No one can lawfully confer episcopal consecration unless the existence of the corresponding apostolic mandate is first established with certainty. [...] The so-called patriotic movement proclaims a pretended right of Catholics to elect bishops on their own initiative.” — Pius XII, Ad Apostolorum Principis (29 June 1958; translated from the Italian)^[24]

The pope also recalled that the de facto separation imposed by the Communist regime does not dissolve ecclesial communion: there are two orders of reality, the civil institution and the visible Church, which cannot be confused. The doctrine of pagan statolatry forged by Pius XI in Non abbiamo bisogno (1931) found here a new application — see the major study on The Church and Totalitarianism (1917-1989).

The arrest of 8 September 1955

On 8 September 1955, feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Bishop Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei (Gong Pinmei), bishop of Shanghai since 1950, was arrested at his diocesan residence with more than 200 priests and Church leaders — the international dispatches of the time reported 200 Catholic priests arrested that very night; by the end of September, more than 1,200 priests and faithful were detained, the figure retained by Paul Mariani — priests, religious and lay people identified as particularly active in the Legion of Mary and the Catholic youth associations^[25]. Born on 2 August 1901 in Pudong (Shanghai), trained by the Jesuits, ordained priest in 1930, Kung Pin-Mei had been raised to the episcopate on 7 October 1949 — six days after the proclamation of the People's Republic.

The 1960 trial

Five years later, in 1960, the public trial of the “counter-revolutionary Kung Pin-Mei” was held in Shanghai. The bishop was led in handcuffs, dressed in a long white tunic of humiliation, before the people's court. When the prosecutor invited him to “confess his crimes”, the bishop thundered before the crowd: “Long live the pope!” (Jiaohuang wan sui!). No confession would be obtained. He was sentenced to life imprisonment^[26].

Thirty years in prison

Bishop Kung spent thirty consecutive years in detention, including a period of absolute isolation with no access to the liturgy, no news from the outside world, sometimes without even the possibility of praying vocally. According to testimonies gathered after his release, he always refused the slightest concession to the CPCA, despite the promise of immediate release if he joined^[27]. His extraordinary endurance made him, from the 1970s onwards, the symbol of Chinese fidelity to the Holy See.

Cardinal in pectore (1979), revealed in 1991

In 1979, John Paul II, elected a year earlier, created Kung Pin-Mei cardinal in pectore (“in the secret of the heart”), an elevation kept hidden so as not to endanger the life of the bishop still in detention. This elevation remained concealed for twelve years: for twelve years he was already a cardinal, but no one knew — the pope kept his name hidden in his heart to protect him. It was only publicly revealed by the pope at the consistory of 28 June 1991^[28], six years after his release from prison to house arrest (1985 according to the official biography of the foundation^[29]), and three years after his exile to the United States.

Exile and death in Stamford (12 March 2000)

Released from prison in 1985 and then placed under house arrest — the cardinal himself mentioned 1986 in an interview^[30] — authorised to leave China in 1988 to join relatives in Stamford (Connecticut), Bishop Kung spent his last twelve years in a prayerful and discreet retirement. He died on 12 March 2000 at the age of 98, without ever seeing China again^[31]. His foundation, the Cardinal Kung Foundation, created in Stamford by his nephew Joseph Kung, remains today one of the main sources of information on the situation of the underground Church.

The closure of all churches

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution launched by Mao in May 1966 struck not only the Catholics loyal to Rome, but also the official Church of the CPCA. All the churches of China were closed between 1966 and 1979, without exception. Cathedrals turned into warehouses, schools, museums or factories. In Shanghai, Saint Ignatius Cathedral became a grain store; in Beijing, the Southern Cathedral (Nantang) was disfigured and turned into a primary school. Rural chapels were razed^[32].

The clergy sent to the laogai

The bishops of the CPCA themselves — including those who had accepted elevation without pontifical mandate — were sent to the re-education through labour camps (laogai). In simple words: camps where people are locked up and forced to work hard, to compel them to think like the regime. The Chinese clergy, hitherto divided between those loyal to Rome and the patriotics, found itself uniformly persecuted: Maoist ideology tolerated no religion. For ten years, the celebration of Mass was legally and practically impossible. The rare survivors celebrated in secret, in flats, with hosts made of ordinary bread, liturgical vestments cut from bedsheets.

Faith become strictly domestic

It was in this period that a new spiritual figure took shape: the catacomb Catholic of the Cultural Revolution, often a grandmother, who passed on to her grandchildren the rudiments of the catechism — Our Father, Hail Mary, Sign of the Cross, prayers for the dead — without any book, in whispers. Upon their release in 1979, underground priests would discover hundreds of young adults baptised from memory, never catechised by any cleric, but deeply believing. This silent family transmission is today considered one of the living spiritual sources of the Chinese Church^[33].

Document No. 19 (31 March 1982)

The coming to power of Deng Xiaoping in December 1978 and the turn of the Four Modernisations allowed the promulgation, on 31 March 1982, of Document No. 19 of the Central Committee of the Communist Party: “On the fundamental question of religious policy during the socialist period of our country”^[34]. The text officially recognised the lasting existence of religion in socialist society — a major theoretical break with dogmatic Maoism — and authorised the reopening of places of worship under State control. The Five recognised religions (Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism) were each supervised by an official patriotic association.

For Catholics, Document No. 19 marked the public rebirth of the CPCA, which reopened cathedrals, seminaries (first national seminary reopened in Shanghai in 1982, the Sheshan seminary), and diocesan associations. From 1983 onwards, episcopal consecrations resumed, still without pontifical mandate, but this time under the watchful eye of the Holy See, which from the end of the 1980s began discreet diplomatic work to canonically recognise certain repentant “patriotic” bishops.

The underground bishops and Bishop Pietro Joseph Fan Xueyan

But a second Church was reconstituted at the same time, in hiding. At its head: Bishop Pietro Joseph Fan Xueyan (1907-1992), bishop of Baoding (Hebei), arrested in 1958 and detained until 1979. Released that year, in 1981 he consecrated, without prior mandate, three new bishops to ensure the apostolic continuity of the underground Church: informed after the fact, John Paul II legitimised these ordinations and granted Fan special faculties to provide for the vacant dioceses^[35]. During the 1980s, Fan Xueyan and his successors thus consecrated dozens of “underground” bishops, none of whom recognised the CPCA.

This strategy of parallel succession was validated by Rome: informed after the fact, John Paul II legitimised these ordinations and granted Fan special faculties to provide for the vacant dioceses^[36]. From then on, in the eyes of the Holy See, the underground bishops thus consecrated exercised a legitimate ministry, while the official hierarchy ordained without mandate lived in a gravely irregular situation. But this validation produced a double hierarchy, the source of countless pastoral dramas in the dioceses where an official CPCA bishop and an underground bishop loyal to Rome coexisted.

Fan Xueyan was arrested a second time in 1982, sentenced to ten years in prison. Detained until his death, he was found lifeless on 13 April 1992 in a cell in Chengde. His body, returned to his family with broken bones and marks of torture, was exposed for only a few hours before the authorities proceeded with a forced funeral. AsiaNews and the Washington Post of 25 April 1992 reported a death by ill-treatment^[37].

The situation at the end of John Paul II's pontificate

At the end of the pontificate of John Paul II (2005), the situation was stabilised but deadlocked. The estimated statistics — a contested estimate, with no official census (Tripod, summer 2005) — converged towards 10 to 12 million Chinese Catholics^[38]. About 60 bishops were recognised both by Rome and by the CPCA (the so-called “legitimate and public” status), about 30 bishops remained purely official (without communion with Rome), and 40 to 50 underground bishops continued their ministry on the margins of the system. Relations between the two Churches had gradually relaxed: some priests concelebrated, faithful moved from one community to the other, official bishops were discreetly reconciled with the pope. On 24 October 2001, on the occasion of the fourth centenary of Matteo Ricci's arrival in Beijing (1601-2001), John Paul II expressed his historic request for forgiveness for Catholic faults committed over the centuries towards China, notably in the Rites Controversy^[39]. Vatican diplomacy waited for a similar gesture from Beijing. It never came.

Genesis of the document

Elected on 19 April 2005, Benedict XVI made the Chinese dossier one of his diplomatic and pastoral priorities. A theologian by training, he rejected the purely diplomatic approach favoured by some of his collaborators and wanted to restate the principles of communion. On 27 May 2007, on the Solemnity of Pentecost, he published the Letter to the Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of the Catholic Church in the People's Republic of China — a long, dense, doctrinal text, which would remain the fundamental pastoral reference for the following quarter-century^[40].

The three great principles

The letter articulates three capital principles:

1. A clear distinction between the civil order and the ecclesial order. The Catholic Church in China is not a threat to the Chinese State; it does not seek to transform its political institutions. Its mission is essentially religious.

“The Catholic Church in China too has the mission not to change the structure or administration of the State, but to proclaim Christ, Saviour of the world, to men, relying — in the fulfilment of her apostolate — on the power of God.” — Benedict XVI, Letter to the Catholics of China, no. 4 (27 May 2007)^[41]

On relations with the State, the pope took up the words of John Paul II recalling Father Matteo Ricci: “the Catholic Church today asks no privilege of China and its political Authorities, but only to be able to resume dialogue, in order to arrive at a relationship marked by mutual respect and deeper understanding”^[42].

2. Doctrinal incompatibility between the CPCA in its present statutes and Catholic communion. The letter recalled, with a bluntness few expected, that the CPCA's claim to “exercise control over the bishops” and to “direct the Catholic community” as a whole was not “reconcilable with Catholic doctrine”^[43]. But it distinguished the CPCA as a structure (to be transformed) from the individual Catholic faithful who belong to it (often in upright conscience, to be welcomed).

3. Internal reconciliation between the official Church and the underground Church. On this point, the letter was heartrending. Benedict XVI asked the Catholics of China, both official and underground, no longer to regard one another as adversaries, but as the divided members of one Body called to unity. He explicitly invited underground priests and bishops to “make their situation known, as far as possible, to the civil authorities” in order to emerge progressively from hiding^[44].

The World Day of Prayer for the Church in China (24 May)

The letter concluded with the institution of a World Day of Prayer for the Church in China set for 24 May, the memorial of Mary Help of Christians, which also corresponds to the traditional Chinese pilgrimage to the Marian shrine of Sheshan, near Shanghai^[45]. For the occasion, Benedict XVI composed a “Prayer to Our Lady of Sheshan”, translated into Mandarin, distributed on a large scale in the Chinese communities of the diaspora.

“the commitment of all those who, in China, amid daily difficulties, continue to believe, to hope, to love, so that they may never fear to speak of Jesus to the world and of the world to Jesus” — Benedict XVI, Prayer to Our Lady of Sheshan (May 2008), quoted in the Angelus of 25 May 2008^[46]

Reception in China and sanctions

The reception of the document was immediate and contrasted. Underground bishops hailed it as a doctrinal liberation; those of the CPCA reacted cautiously. The Chinese authorities banned the dissemination of the official text in mainland China: it circulated by photocopy, by memory, and above all via the Internet (until progressive filtering). In 2008, in retaliation, the Shanghai authorities imposed the first massive restrictions on Sheshan: bans on organised diocesan pilgrimages from Hong Kong, identity checks at the entrance of the shrine, progressive closure of the adjacent park^[47]. The situation would harden further after 2020.

Genesis and negotiation

Elected on 13 March 2013, Francis entrusted the Chinese dossier to Cardinal Pietro Parolin, his new Secretary of State (appointed 31 August 2013). Parolin resumed diplomatic negotiations begun under Benedict XVI but interrupted by the wild ordinations of 2010-2011 (episcopal ordination of Lei Shiyin in Leshan on 29 June 2011, without pontifical mandate: latae sententiae excommunication — which applies by itself, as explained above^[48]). Five years of secret negotiations led to the signature, on 22 September 2018 in Beijing, of a Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People's Republic of China on the appointment of bishops^[49].

The known content

The full text remains secret — the exceptional case of a diplomatic agreement between two States whose content is not published. The known elements, from official communiques and controlled leaks, are as follows:

• the People's Republic of China presents the candidates for the episcopate according to an internal procedure in which the CPCA plays a determining role;
• the pope retains a right of veto, that is, no name can be imposed against his explicit will;
• seven Chinese bishops excommunicated under Benedict XVI because ordained without mandate were reintegrated into Catholic communion by Francis simultaneously with the signature;
• the Bishops' Conference of the Catholic Church in China (hitherto unrecognised by Rome) entered a phase of progressive integration;
• the underground dioceses remained in ambiguity: some of their bishops were recognised by the State within the framework of the new agreement, but the legal status of the underground clergy as a whole remained to be clarified.

The first ordinations under the new agreement

The first public implementation of the agreement was the episcopal ordination of Bishop Anthony Yao Shun, bishop of Jining (Inner Mongolia), in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary in Jining (Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia) on 26 August 2019. For the first time since 1958, an episcopal ordination in mainland China took place with a publicly recognised pontifical mandate by both parties^[50]. The gesture was hailed in Rome as the diplomatic concretisation of a normalisation.

The renewals (2020, 2022, 2024)

The renewal of 22 October 2024, signed for four years (double the previous renewals, hence until 22 October 2028), reflected the Holy See's lasting commitment to the path opened in 2018, despite the arrest and trial of Cardinal Zen in the meantime^[51]. After this renewal, the agreement continued to be applied: Leo XIV appointed Bishop Francis Li Jianlin to the apostolic prefecture of Xinxiang on 11 August 2025, ordained bishop in Xinxiang on 5 December 2025; the Holy See Press Office welcomed on 6 December 2025 the civil recognition of Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu as bishop emeritus; then Bishop Paolo Liu Honggang was ordained in Datong on 31 August 2026, the sixth ordination of the pontificate within the framework of the agreement^[52]. The communique of the Holy See Press Office stressed the “provisional” character of the arrangement and expressed the hope of a “deepening and broadening” of the dialogue. Vatican diplomacy described the agreement as a “dyke” preventing further ruptures, not as a definitive settlement.

From Shanghai to Hong Kong: itinerary of a confessor

Born on 13 January 1932 in Shanghai, Joseph Zen Ze-kiun (in Cantonese: Chan Yat-kwan) entered the Salesians in 1944, fled the mainland at 16 in 1948 to escape the Maoist revolution, was ordained priest in Turin in 1961, and became one of the principal pastors of the Chinese diaspora in Hong Kong. Bishop of Hong Kong in 2002, created cardinal by Benedict XVI on 24 March 2006^[53], he rapidly became the most listened-to voice of Chinese Catholicism abroad.

The public break with Vatican diplomacy

Zen initially supported, in the 2000s, Benedict XVI's policy of rapprochement. But as Francis's diplomacy moved towards an agreement with Beijing, he became one of its sharpest critics. On 24 September 2018, two days after the signature of the agreement, he published an Open Letter to the cardinals^[54], in which he denounced what he considered an abandonment of the underground bishops and faithful. In an interview with Reuters in Hong Kong on 19 September 2018, he publicly opposed the agreement in preparation, which he judged contrary to the interests of the underground Church that had remained loyal to Rome at the cost of heavy persecutions^[55].

The arrest of 11 May 2022

On 11 May 2022, then aged 90, Cardinal Zen was arrested in Hong Kong by the national security police under the new National Security Law imposed by Beijing in June 2020. The official grounds were not religious but financial: he was accused of “collusion with foreign forces” for his role as trustee of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, a humanitarian fund which had supported the pro-democracy demonstrators of 2019^[56]. He was released on bail the same day.

Conviction and worldwide resonance

After several weeks of hearings, the verdict fell on 25 November 2022: Cardinal Zen was found guilty, like five of his co-defendants (including singer Denise Ho and human rights lawyer Margaret Ng), for failure to register the association; he was sentenced to a fine of HKD 4,000 (about USD 510)^[57]. The modesty of the penalty, desired by the authorities so as not to fuel the international scandal too much, took nothing away from the symbolic scope of the verdict: it is the first time a serving cardinal has been convicted in Hong Kong for civic activity, and the first conviction of a serving cardinal by a Communist regime since that of Cardinal József Mindszenty in Hungary in 1949^[58].

Received by Pope Francis in Rome in January 2023^[59], Cardinal Zen continued to plead publicly the cause of the underground Church, without formally breaking with the Holy See, while maintaining his criticism of the Vatican's China strategy.

The May 2015 doctrine and the invention of a concept

Elected General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012, Xi Jinping progressively launched, from May 2015, at the United Front Conference, a now central doctrine: the “sinicization” (Zhongguohua) of religions. The concept was taken up and systematised at the National Conference on Religious Work of April 2016. Every religion present on the territory of the People's Republic must be adapted to “Chinese culture”, to “the socialist path” and to “the leadership of the Party”^[60]. The concept must not be confused with inculturation in the Christian sense: it is not a matter of embodying the Gospel in Chinese culture (as Matteo Ricci attempted in the Chinese Rites Controversy), but of subordinating religion to Party ideology.

The “Five-Year Plan for advancing the sinicization of Catholicism” (2018-2022)

In June 2018, the Chinese Council of Bishops (official body unrecognised by Rome) and the CPCA jointly published a document entitled “Five-Year Plan for advancing the sinicization of Catholicism in our nation (2018-2022)”^[61]. The text imposed on all parishes:

• the adaptation of preaching to the “core socialist values” proclaimed by the 18th PCC Congress;
• the hoisting of the national flag at the entrances of all churches;
• the rewriting of Church history from a patriotic perspective;
• the visual indigenisation of religious works of art (progressive removal of images judged too “Western”);
• the formation of seminarians in Xi Jinping Thought and in “the glorious history of the CCP”.

A new 2023-2027 plan was launched at the end of 2023, extending these orientations.

The demolitions of crosses in Zhejiang (2014-2016)

Between January 2014 and the end of 2016, the coastal province of Zhejiang — nicknamed “Chinese Jerusalem” because of its high Christian density (1.3 million Protestants and 220,000 Catholics) — was subjected to a campaign called “Three rectifications, one demolition” targeting religious buildings. Between 1,500 and 1,800 crosses were knocked down from the tops of Catholic and Protestant churches by the local authorities, several entire buildings (including the great Protestant church of Sanjiang, 2014) were razed. The figure cited by ChinaAid in February 2016 — 1,700 crosses demolished — is today the most widely repeated^[62].

The progressive closure of Sheshan

The Marian shrine of Sheshan, in Songjiang near Shanghai, is one of the largest Catholic pilgrimage sites in Asia. Built between 1925 and 1935 on a hill visible from the megalopolis, it houses a stone basilica, a monumental Calvary, and a bronze statue of the Virgin holding the Child Jesus. Since 2008 (first anniversary of Benedict XVI's letter), the Shanghai authorities have progressively limited access to the shrine during the month of May, especially for pilgrims coming from Hong Kong and the diaspora. The Covid-19 pandemic served as a pretext for an almost total closure since 2020: only a few local faithful are admitted, the adjacent park remains closed to the public, and the great celebration of 24 May is banned^[63]. The date instituted by Benedict XVI as World Day of Prayer for the Church in China was thus emptied of its public meaning on Chinese territory — but remains celebrated throughout the world.

Bishop James Su Zhimin and the disappeared bishops

Bishop James Su Zhimin, underground bishop of Baoding (Hebei), arrested for the first time in 1977 (15 years of imprisonment, until 1993), then arrested in March 1996 during a procession to the Marian shrine of Donglu, escaped a month later, and recaptured on 8 October 1997, has never been seen publicly since November 2003^[64]. On that date, relatives had briefly glimpsed him at Baoding hospital, under police guard. Born in 1932, he would be 94 today. His nephews and the diocese in exile suppose that he died in detention, without any official confirmation having been obtained. The case is symbolic of an entire category of disappeared bishops, neither released, nor officially convicted, nor declared dead.

The arrest of Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu (May 2021)

On 20 May 2021, nearly 100 Chinese police officers raided the disused factory of Shaheqiao (Hebei) which had served since 2018 as an underground seminary for the diocese of Xinxiang. The next day, 21 May 2021, Bishop Joseph Zhang Weizhu, underground bishop of Xinxiang recognised by Rome, was arrested at his home^[65]. Suffering from cancer, he had undergone surgery shortly before the arrest. Detained in the following years — the Holy See asked for his release through diplomatic channels — he later laid down his office: Pope Leo XIV accepted his resignation from pastoral government and appointed Bishop Francis Li Jianlin bishop of the apostolic prefecture of Xinxiang on 11 August 2025, within the framework of the provisional agreement; the latter was ordained in Xinxiang on 5 December 2025. The Chinese authorities then granted Bishop Zhang civil recognition as bishop emeritus, a gesture welcomed by the Holy See Press Office as a further step in the dialogue^[66]. The affair, subsequent to the 2018 provisional agreement and its first renewal, is one of the main stumbling blocks in Cardinal Zen's and the diaspora bishops' criticism of the agreement.

The ban on minors in churches

A less publicised but profound dimension of sinicization is the strict application of a ban on minors under 18 from entering places of worship and receiving religious formation. This policy, initiated by Document No. 6 of 5 February 1991 (circular of the Party Central Committee and the State Council on improving religious work, which reinforced the control and registration of religious activities) but unevenly applied, has been rigorously enforced since 2018 with the entry into force of the Revised Regulations on Religious Affairs (1 February 2018), which prohibit religious activities involving minors^[67] : signs at the entrances of cathedrals, video surveillance, expulsion of families with children, denunciation of parents by schools. Family transmission, the main resource of the Chinese Catholic Church since the Cultural Revolution, was thus explicitly targeted.

How many Catholics? Contested statistics

No official Chinese census provides a reliable figure. The most commonly retained estimate, due to the Holy Spirit Study Centre of Hong Kong (statistical bulletin, 2023 edition), puts the number of Chinese Catholics at around 10 million (peak of 12 million estimated around 2005, slight decline since, Catholic World Report assessment of 22 December 2024): this is a contested estimate, with no official census^[68]. The official Church (CPCA) claims about 6 million faithful in about 6,000 parishes, 70 public bishops (most recognised simultaneously by Rome and by the State since 2018), 3,800 priests, 5,600 religious sisters and about 10 major seminaries. The underground Church is estimated at between 4 and 6 million faithful, 40 to 60 bishops (some disappeared or elderly), several hundred priests, and a dense network of rural communities particularly in Hebei and Shanxi. The boundaries between the two Churches have become porous since 2018: many underground priests have accepted public registration on condition of keeping their loyalty to Rome.

The hierarchy: between integration and opacity

Following the 2018 provisional agreement, all the bishops of mainland China are, in principle, in canonical communion with the Holy See^[69]. But this legal unity masks three fragilities:

1. The elderly underground bishops or those disappeared have not been replaced according to traditional canonical procedures; some dioceses find themselves administered by official bishops whom underground faithful do not fully recognise.
2. Several post-2018 appointments took place without the pope's explicit agreement (cases reported in Shanghai in April 2023 during the uncoordinated transfer of Bishop Joseph Shen Bin), which openly contradicted the spirit of the agreement^[70].
3. The Bishops' Conference of the Catholic Church in China (official body) still does not include the underground bishops recognised by Rome; unity therefore remains de jure but not de facto.

The role of Cardinal Stephen Chow in Hong Kong

In this tense context, Pope Francis made, in May 2021, a remarkable pastoral choice: he appointed Stephen Chow Sau-yan, a Hong Kong Jesuit born in 1959, as bishop of Hong Kong, ordained on 4 December 2021. On 30 September 2023, at the ordinary consistory, Francis created him cardinal (title of San Giovanni Battista de La Salle)^[71]. Chow presents himself as a “bridge” figure between the diaspora, Hong Kong and the mainland; he made an official visit to Beijing from 17 to 21 April 2023 (first visit by a bishop of Hong Kong since 1985)^[72], received his Beijing counterpart Bishop Joseph Li Shan in November 2023, and attempted a patient diplomacy contrasting with the frankness of his predecessor Zen. His cardinal appointment concentrates in a single man the complexity of the contemporary Chinese Church: deeply Chinese, deeply Roman Catholic, deeply attached to Hong Kong freedom of expression, deeply engaged in dialogue with Beijing.

A sacramental life that resists

Despite the restrictions, ecclesiastical statistics show a paradoxical vitality: about 50,000 to 80,000 adult baptisms per year since the early 2000s, a number of annual priestly ordinations comparable to that of France (60 to 100 depending on the year), growing Chinese religious congregations, and the emergence of lay spirituality movements suited to the context (groups of young urban professionals, silent family pilgrimages, lectio divina in flat cells)^[73].

A tested apostolic succession

Apostolic succession in China is today valid but weakened by seventy years of irregularities. The underground Church, from Bishop Fan Xueyan to the parallel successions of the 1980s-1990s, maintained an unbroken episcopal chain at the cost of countless sacrifices. The official Church, despite seven excommunicated bishops reintegrated in 2018, also possesses a valid apostolic succession (consecration without mandate is gravely illicit but sacramentally valid, a principle recalled by Ad Apostolorum Principis^[74]). The unity of Catholic communion in China therefore remains, on the strictly sacramental level, intact; but on the legal and pastoral level, it still requires a long internal reconciliation.

The Chinese saints: 120 martyrs canonised in 2000

On 1 October 2000, Chinese national day (anniversary of the proclamation of the People's Republic), John Paul II solemnly canonised in Saint Peter's 120 martyrs of China — 87 Chinese and 33 foreign missionaries, fallen between 1648 and 1930, mainly during the Boxer persecution of 1900^[75]. The choice of date provoked Beijing's fury, which denounced an “insult to national dignity”. This collective canonisation made the Chinese Church one of the most richly martyrological of the twentieth century, after the Polish and Russian Churches. Several contemporary causes for beatification are under way: Bishop Pietro Fan Xueyan, Cardinal Kung Pin-Mei, various priests and religious who died in detention. No cause has succeeded to date, notably because of the difficulty of gathering diocesan evidence in mainland China.

The pastoral challenge

The pastoral challenge today is threefold:

1. Maintaining communion between Rome and China, despite the ideological pressure of sinicization, without concealing the concrete violations of religious freedom;
2. Reconciling the official Church and the underground Church without humiliating the one that suffered martyrdom nor excluding the one that accepted to live in legality;
3. Passing on the faith to the new Chinese generation, urban, trained in Party ideology, in a digital surveillance society where confession can no longer be presumed secret.

Hypotheses for the future: collapse, integration or new hidden spring?

Three scenarios are today discussed by Catholic observers:

None of these scenarios is exclusive. The history of the Church in China since 1949 is made of paradoxical alternations: persecution did not kill the faith, diplomatic accommodation did not immediately bring freedom, fidelity to the pope cost a bishop thirty years in prison but ended up producing a cardinal venerated worldwide. The paschal mystery is inscribed in it as in few other contemporary national histories.

For a Catholic, these three scenarios are not three equivalent bets between which one would have to choose coldly: the mission of the Church in China is not to change the structure or administration of the State, but “to proclaim Christ, Saviour of the world, to men”^[76]. Benedict XVI entrusted this mission to the prayer of the whole Church — notably the World Day of Prayer of 24 May and the Prayer to Our Lady of Sheshan^[77] — in the confidence of the paschal mystery: it is by passing through the cross with Christ that the tested Church of China already bears its fruit.

• The Chinese Rites Controversy (1645-1742) — to understand the missionary heritage and the historical blockages that delayed the legitimate sinicization of Chinese Catholicism.
• The Church and Totalitarianism (1917-1989) — to situate the Chinese case within the great doctrinal matrix of Catholic struggles against twentieth-century totalitarianisms.
• The Underground Church under Communism (1917-1991) — for the doctrine and practice of parallel apostolic succession, of which China is today one of the last fields of application.
• The Jesuit Missions in Japan — to compare two histories of martyr Churches in the Far East.
• The Christian Renaissance — for analogous cases of Christianity returning after Communist persecution.