Weigel Slams Vatican Approach to Chinese Communist Regime (2025)

An agreement reached between Vatican officials and the Chinese Communist Party in 2018 giving the latter a significant and dominant role in the nomination of Catholic bishops in China was deeply flawed from the outset, according to a leading Roman Catholic scholar and biographer of Pope John Paul II.

“This is a violation of the teaching of the second Vatican Council and its decree on the office of bishop, which says that no concession should be made to civil authorities and the nomination of bishop,” Ethics and Public Policy Center Chair in Catholic Studies George Weigel told a Hudson Institute gathering in Washington D.C. “That teaching of the council was then embodied in Cannon 377.5 of the code of canon law. So, what was done in 2018 in fact violates the church’s own self-standing and is technically illegal.”

Weigel spoke at the November 15 event moderated by Maggie Gallagher, Director of the Martyrs of Communism at the Benedict XVI Institute. It featured a discussion on religious persecution by far-left regimes and those martyred under these oppressive systems. The assembled experts examined common ideology and practices presently taking place in both China and Latin America to oppress Christian churches.

Speakers included Weigel, Founder and Chairman of the Benedict XVI Institute and Archbishop of San Francisco Salvatore Cordileone, Center for Religious Freedom Director Nina Shea, Nicaraguan protester Marco Novoa, and Nicaraguan American journalist Helen Aguirre Ferre.

Cordileone offered a keynote address, “Why Marxist and Neo-Marxist Regimes Fear Religion.” Followed by Shea speaking on her Hudson report Ten Persecuted Catholic Bishops in China, which detail Chinese Communist oppression of Catholic clergy.

Weigel’s presentation sought to summarize Vatican policy toward communist regimes across 80 years.

“There is a cad of largely Italian Vatican diplomats who have been obsessed for 30 years with achieving full diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China,” Weigel characterized.

Weigel disagrees with the Vatican diplomats’ sentiment, saying that they see this deal vis-à-vis the Church in China as a first step toward obtaining “a seat at the table” with the rising East Asian hegemonic power.

“Say you get a seat at the table, why do the people whom have kowtowed you for 10-20 years, Why would they pay you the slightest bit of attention? They know they can roll you, that’s why you’re here,” Weigel posited.

The papal biographer insisted that the Ostpolitik, advanced by Pope Paul VI and Vatican diplomat Agostino Casaroli, was “a complete failure.” It dropped vocal criticism of the communist regimes governing Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and others “to try to find what Casaroli described in Latin, ‘modus non moriendi,’ a way of not dying. This went on for some 15 years.”

Faithful Catholics behind the Iron Curtain were left feeling abandoned, demoralized, and worse experienced increased persecution.

“Yet in Rome today, the Casaroli Ostpolitik is regarded as a great success,” Weigel noted.

“This cadre of Italian Vatican diplomats who have been pressing on this, they propose this deal to John Paul II, he says, ‘no thanks we’re not going to do that.’ They propose it to Benedict XVI he says, ‘no thanks we’re not going to do that.’ Then they find themselves with a pope who either out of ignorance or lack of experience or naïveté says ‘yes.’”

Weigel asserted that the 2018 agreement with China has not worked.

“Just as the Ostpolitik of the late 60s and 1970s, things are getting worse,” Weigel assessed. “In certain parts of the Vatican, they’re like the Bourbons [dynasty] in France: they have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing. We have this scandalous situation.”

“I believe this is going to be a significant issue at the next papal conclave,” Weigel predicted. “But, for now, as Nina indicated and Archbishop Cordileone had previously indicated, the best thing we can do is to keep the spotlight on, to be in solidarity of prayer with these brave men and women in China, and to be ready for that moment when it becomes possible to freely speak a word of gospel truth in China in the future.”

MORE: Watch the event in full on the Hudson Institute YouTube channel below.