Pope Francis's deal with China is seen to fail. (Photo : Getty Images)
Eight Chinese bishops are going to be ordained by China without the permission of the Vatican, according to a deal that is awaiting the final approval of Pope Francis and President Xi Jinping.
According to analysts, this is a deal that will lead the Vatican compromised and in the losing end of the attempt to cut the decades-long rift between China and the Vatican.
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, a fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said, "The pope surely thinks of such a deal as a coup. But, if approved, it would be an unmitigated catastrophe. It would not only be morally indefensible, it would also amount to nothing less than a dynamiting of Chinese Catholicism."
In China, President Xi Jinping has the final say in the ordaining of bishops. Bishops are nominated by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.
The U.S. State Department said that believers of Chinese Catholicism "must worship clandestinely. The Chinese government has systematically oppressed Catholics who refuse to kowtow to the Chinese government's vision of a subservient Catholicism."
"Faithful and clergy alike are subject to various levels of harassment and imprisonment, and reports of 'disappearances' of 'unregistered' priests and bishops are still common," the department stated.
Richard Madsen, a professor of sociology at the University of California at San Diego, thinks that the China would want the church to be further divided.
He said, "If the Vatican should be perceived as abandoning them, it could be seen as a betrayal" and "cause serious divisions in the Chinese Catholic Church. The government would probably actually like this. Its action over the years show that it would like to see the church weakened, and a deeper division in the church would help accomplish that."
