China’s newest Roman Catholic bishop has been installed after promising to “uphold socialist principles”, under an agreement allowing the Communist Party (CCP) to control the appointments process.
Bishop Joseph Yang Yongqiang, of Hangzhou in the east of the country, said he would adhere to the principle of “Sinicisation” of religious practices at his inauguration on Thursday.
He also vowed to “hold high the banner of patriotism and love for the church, adhere to the principle of independence, self-reliance and self-management and persist in taking a path that is compatible with socialist society”, according to Chinese state media coverage.
Yang was bishop of the smaller see of Zhoucun in the Shandong province southeast of Beijing before being transferred by the Catholic Patriotic Association, the CCP-approved Roman church in China.
His appointment and the speech accompanying it are signs of improved relations between Beijing and the Vatican under Pope Francis, and also a reminder of the compromises forced on the Pope to achieve better relations by President Xi. The Vatican has no formal diplomatic relations with Beijing, only with Taiwan, but the two sides have been negotiating over the status of the church in the country for decades.
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For much of the period of CCP rule, China has had two Catholic churches: the Patriotic Association, approved by the ruling party, and an underground church whose priests were appointed by Rome in defiance of the authorities, whose adherents were sometimes but not always persecuted.
The Pope described an agreement forged in 2018 under which he would be allowed to veto the Patriotic Association’s choices of bishop, but not install his own, as necessary for the welfare of the church in the country. Under the agreement, the Pope agreed to recognise “patriotic” bishops already in place.
The move was opposed by anti-Beijing clerics, notably Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former leader of the Catholic church in Hong Kong and a veteran pro-democracy thorn in the side of the authorities. He asked the Vatican’s leadership “what planet they had descended from” in agreeing to trust the CCP on the issue.
Xi has said that “Sinicisation of religion” is one of his key goals. There are five recognised religious organisations in China — Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism — and all operate under tight government control, but underground evangelical protestant movements have become popular in recent decades.
Some are theologically schismatic and the more extreme are often regarded as a threat by Beijing — as are any organisations whose leaders profess primary temporal allegiance to an authority outside the party, such as the Pope.
