Lord Alton speaks up for 10 Chinese bishops and underground Church persecuted by CCP

Charles Collins/Crux• October 22, 2024

Lord David Alton has drawn attention to the continued persecution of the Catholic Church in China through the oppression of 10 bishops by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and has questioned the Vatican’s muted response to the situation.

The comments from Alton, who is one of the leading Catholic members of the UK’s House of Lords, follow an article by Nina Shea published in the Hudson Institute last week entitled “Ten Persecuted Catholic Bishops in China”. Alton says seven of these bishops have been detained without due process, with some of them having been under continuous detention for years or decades, while others have been detained repeatedly since the Vatican reached its accord with the Communist regime in China. Alton calls them the “ten inconvenient bishops the Vatican wants us to forget”.

Quoting Shea’s article, Alton said the CCP has subjected the 10 bishops “to indefinite detention without due process, disappearances, open-ended security police investigations, banishments from their dioceses, or other impediments to their episcopal ministries including threats, surveillance, interrogation, and so-called re-education”.

Lord David Alton attends a press conference in London following an incident at China’s Consulate in Manchester, England, 19 October 2022. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images.)

The persecuted bishops have opposed the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), which requires its members to pledge independence from the Holy See and “conform Christian teaching to Chinese communist doctrine”, Alton says. “They do not accept the right of the Chinese Communist Party to tell them what to believe, think or what to say.”

The member of the House of Lords issued the statement as the Vatican celebrated the attendance of bishops from China at the Synod on Synodality. Bishop Joseph Yang Yongqiang of the Diocese of Hangzhou and Bishop Vincent Zhan Silu of Xiapu are the third delegation to attend a Synod, after the 2018 Synod of Bishops on Youth and last year’s first session of the Synod on Synodality.

The Holy See and China made a provisional agreement in 2018 on the appointment of bishops, which has twice been renewed and is expected to be renewed again soon. Prior to the 2018 agreement, bishops from mainland China were unable to come to Rome for Vatican-sponsored events.

Since it came to its agreement with China, the Vatican has been regularly criticised for not highlighting the ongoing persecution of Catholics and other religious believers in the officially atheist country.

Shea writes in her article that since the Sinicization policy in 2015, “the Chinese Catholic Church has seen its greatest repression since the Mao Zedong era”.

“The China-Vatican agreement makes no accommodation for the conscientious objectors to the CPCA, who are often called the underground Church. Nor does the agreement address religious persecution. The Vatican states that the pact, the contents of which are secret, is narrowly focused on a power-sharing arrangement for episcopal appointments. Yet Beijing has used it to pressure Catholic bishops into joining the CPCA,” Shea writes.

She pointes out Beijing has unilaterally announced several appointments in an apparent violation of the China-Vatican agreement.

“For the sake of Chinese Catholic Church ‘unity’, Pope Francis approved these appointments after the fact. But Beijing’s persecution of the 10 bishops in this report is the real threat to the Catholic Church’s unity,” Shea adds.

Alton also highlighted a 17 October article by George Weigel in the Wall Street Journal about China’s representatives at the Synod.

Weigel said there is “an often brutal effort” to impose “Sinicize” religious communities, bringing them into conformity with “Xi Jinping Thought” – referring to China’s president.

“The Chinese regime assigned Bishop Zhan Silu to his diocese in 2000. The bishop incurred excommunication for accepting consecration as a bishop without papal approval, a grave ecclesiastical crime. He was subsequently reconciled to the Church in 2018 but a year later, Weigel notes, the bishop publicly vowed, in his own words, “to carry out the Sinicization of religion with determination” and to “continue to follow a path that conforms to socialist society”.

Weigel also pointed out the other representative from China is vice president of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

“Bishop Yang’s position in the CCPA further deepens the gulf between the regime-controlled Church in China and the sorely beset underground Church, which has remained loyal to Rome even as its clergy and laity are jailed or martyred,” Weigel wrote.

The American author – who was the biographer of Pope John Paul II – said the Vatican’s interaction with China has been “an abject failure”.

Weigel said Francis seemingly agreed to the new deal “because his diplomats persuaded him that cutting that deal – and later welcoming men like Bishops Zhan and Yang into the synodal fold – was a step toward full diplomatic relations” between the Vatican, which currently has relations with Taiwan.

“Meantime, the pursuit of this diplomatic fantasy has muted the Vatican’s voice on behalf of all persecuted believers in China,” he adds.

“The pontiff says he is ‘happy with the dialogue,’ the results of which have been ‘good.’ They are, in truth, a disgrace,” Weigel says.

Photo: Chinese Catholic faithful hold candles during an Easter Mass at a church in Beijing, China, 30 March 2024. (Photo by WANG ZHAO/AFP via Getty Images.)