Why Biden needs to talk to the Pope about China

If there is one key message I hope President Joe Biden will give to Pope Francis when they meet tomorrow, it is this: “End your silence on China’s human rights atrocities and review the Vatican’s deal with Beijing.”

For the past decade, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime has conducted the most severe crackdown on human rights since the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 and, when it comes to religion, the worst persecution since the Cultural Revolution. Xi Jinping’s regime now stands accused by a growing number of governments, legislatures, lawyers and scholars of perpetrating genocide against the Uyghurs. It has intensified its repression of Christians, Falun Gong practitioners and Tibetans. It has dismantled Hong Kong’s freedoms, in flagrant breach of an international treaty, the Sino-British Joint Declaration. An independent tribunal chaired by the barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who prosecuted Slobodan Milosevic, concluded beyond doubt that the regime is committing a crime against humanity by forcibly removing organs from prisoners of conscience on a widespread scale. Those engaging with the regime in Beijing, that tribunal concluded, must be aware that in so doing they are dealing with a “criminal state”.

Yet on all this, the Pope has been conspicuous by his silence. Apart from a fleeting reference to the Uyghurs in his book Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future late last year, briefly acknowledging that they are “persecuted”, he has said nothing substantial about the atrocity crimes unleashed against them. Nor has he said anything about the persecution of Christians or the destruction of Hong Kong’s freedoms. He refused to meet the Dalai Lama and even his own Cardinal, the courageous Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong Joseph Zen last time the 89 year-old Salesian went to Rome. 

The Holy See is looking increasingly out of step with much of the free world on China. Liberal democracies are, to varying degrees, starting to wake up to the intensifying repression and increasing aggression of China’s dictatorship. The United States has led the way, with strong bipartisan support. China is perhaps the only policy area where there is broad agreement among Republicans and Democrats, and President Biden has largely continued and built on the Trump administration’s approach of condemnation and sanctions. Britain has shifted, particularly in its rhetoric, and has imposed some sanctions as well, although there is much more to do. Australia has taken a strong stand, and Canada and some in the European Union are catching up too. Indeed, as the President and the Pope meet, an unprecedented coalition of international legislators from the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) is gathering in Rome, to urge the G20 meeting this weekend to confront the China challenge. Yet the Holy See seems doggedly determined to say nothing in public.

Key to this is the deal which was signed between the Vatican and Beijing in 2018, and renewed last year, over the appointment of Catholic bishops. The agreement itself remains secret, so no one other than the two parties to it knows its details, but the little we do know is grim. It gives the atheist Communist Party regime a say in the appointment of bishops, it has led to pressure from Rome to previously loyal bishops from the underground Church to step down in favour of Beijing’s nominees, and it has not led to any single improvement in religious freedom. On the contrary, clergy and laity – Catholic and Protestant – continue to be arrested, hundreds of churches have been closed or destroyed, thousands of crosses torn down, and in the State-approved churches which Rome wants to include in its fold, pictures of Xi Jinping and Communist Party propaganda banners are displayed alongside, or sometimes instead of, religious images. Under-18s are now prohibited from attending worship, surveillance cameras are at the altar and the regime is now preparing a new translation of the Bible as part of its Sinicisation policy, to bring the scriptures into line with Communist Party dogma. Yet still, the Pope says nothing.

As a Catholic, a democrat who wants to be seen to defend human rights, and the leader of the free world, President Biden has a golden opportunity to raise these concerns with the Holy Father. He is far better placed than his predecessor to do so, because it is clear that he has much more in common with the Pope. So I hope he will use this opportunity to urge Pope Francis to rethink his approach to China, and at the very least express a prayer for the Uyghurs, Chinese Christians, Tibetans and Hong Kongers one Sunday during the Angelus. Even such a small step would do a lot to reassure us that this Pope, who speaks so often about victims of injustice and persecution, prays for China.

Benedict Rogers is a human rights activist and writer. He is the co-founder and Chief Executive of Hong Kong Watch, Senior Analyst for East Asia at the international human rights organisation CSW, co-founder and Deputy Chair of the UK Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, a member of the advisory group of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), and a member of the advisory group of the Stop Uyghur Genocide Campaign.