Don’t bow to Beijing, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo tells Pope Francis

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has challenged the Vatican on its Catholic bishops deal with Beijing and scolded the Italian government on China ties.

US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, left, and Pope Francis. Pictures: AFP

Pope Francis should resist engaging with the “horrifying” Chinese government which is involved in crushing religious freedoms, Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, said during a visit to the Vatican.

Mr Pompeo issued the challenge as the Pope prepares to renew a two-year deal with Beijing on jointly appointing Catholic bishops in the country. He also scolded the Italian government over its commercial ties to Beijing.

Claiming that Beijing has crushed religious freedom on a “horrifying scale”, Mr Pompeo said Catholic shrines were being destroyed in China while images of Jesus were being replaced by those of Mao. “Nowhere is religious freedom under assault as it is in China today,” he said at a conference held by the US embassy to the Holy See.

Vatican-appointed bishops used to run an underground and frequently persecuted Catholic Church in China, unrecognised by Beijing, which oversees an official state Church. In 2018, the Vatican signed a deal giving China a say in naming new bishops who will recognise the Pope as their leader. Critics say this gives Beijing an effective veto.

Vatican diplomats see the deal as part of a patient strategy to improve the lot of Chinese Catholics in the long term.

Speaking at the conference, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s British foreign minister, did not mention China but claimed that cutting off talks with regimes would be “a disservice to the voiceless, who are persecuted, who are mocked, discriminated against or even killed because of their religious convictions.”

Critics counter that China’s arrest of underground priests has continued since the 2018 deal. “We don’t know the terms of the agreement and that to me is unacceptable,” said Raymond Burke, an American cardinal and conservative foe of Francis’s who sat in the front row at the conference.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivers remarks at a Holy See Symposium on Advancing and Defending Religious Freedom through Diplomacy, appealing to the Vatican to take a stand against China. Picture: Guglielmo Mangiapane/AFP

Mr Pompeo first challenged the Pope earlier this month with an article urging him not to renew the deal. On Thursday he will have an audience with the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, but his request to meet the Pope was turned down.

Vatican officials said they wanted to avoid showing bias so close to the US election, although irritation over the article reportedly played a role. Cardinal Parolin also suggested Mr Pompeo’s attacks were a calculated ploy to win over conservative US voters. “I don’t have proof of this but certainly this is one way of looking at it,” he said.

Observers argue that the Vatican’s long game in China is no different to its patient diplomacy with the former Eastern bloc. Cardinal Parolin worked as a priest with Achille Silvestrini, the late cardinal and Vatican diplomat credited with keeping channels open with the Soviet Union to help protect the rights of resident Catholics.

Another former disciple of Silvestrini’s is the Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte. Mr Conte last year oversaw Italy’s entry into China’s Belt and Road trade and infrastructure initiative — the first G7 nation to do so — drawing fierce criticism from the US.

After meeting Mr Conte on Wednesday, Mr Pompeo said the US was worried China was leveraging its economic role in Italy for strategic gain. Francesco Galietti, a political analyst at Policy Sonar, said: “The traditional US-Italy-Vatican triangle is being replaced by an Italy-Vatican-China triangle.”

The Times