The Vatican’s announcement of a historic breakthrough in its relations with Communist China may come to be considered one of the most significant and far-reaching of the papacy of Pope Francis. It could also turn out to have been one of his most emphatic mistakes. Weighing such risks when dealing with authoritarian regimes is probably the least enviable aspect of what a Pope does.

History judges that Pope Pius XII mishandled his relations with the Nazis, and that Pope Pius V badly miscalculated when he excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I in 1570. History also asks whether Rome bungled its Chinese relations in the eighteenth century.