Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit Kazakhstan on the same day Pope Francis will be in the Central Asian country next week.
The Kazakh Foreign Ministry has announced that Xi will meet Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Sept. 14 during the pope’s three-day visit to the capital, Nur-Sultan.
The coinciding visits of Francis and Xi come as the Holy See and China are in negotiations over the renewal of a provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops in China.
Vatican-China deal
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said in an Italian television interview on Sept. 2 that a delegation of Vatican diplomats has returned from China and that he believes that the agreement will be renewed this fall.
It would be the second time the agreement with Beijing has been renewed since the Holy See first signed it in September 2018.
Beijing severed diplomatic ties with the Holy See in 1951 after Mao Zedong came to power in the Chinese Communist Revolution and expelled missionaries from China.
Without diplomatic relations, a potential encounter between Xi and Pope Francis would be unofficial. There has never been a meeting between a pope and a president of China in the history of the Church.
Religious freedom violations
A source working in the Kazakh parliament told CNA that “theoretically it is possible” that the pope and the president could meet.
Pope Francis will participate in the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Kazakhstan on Sept. 13–15.
The pope is scheduled to hold private meetings with some of the participants in the interreligious summit at noon on Sept. 14, the day of Xi’s visit to the Kazakh capital.
However, it is unlikely that the Chinese leader will take part in the summit of Muslim, Christian, and other religious leaders.
Xi has come under mounting international condemnation for China’s brutal persecution of Uyghur Muslims in the northwest Chinese region of Xinjiang.
The United Nations published a report on Sept. 1 that documented “serious human rights violations” in Xinjiang, including patterns of torture, detention, and sexual violence against the religious minority in China.
Kazakhstan would be Xi’s first official trip outside of China since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which he oversaw the world’s strictest lockdowns.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Xi’s trip to Central Asia could also include a meeting in Uzbekistan with Russian President Vladimir Putin.