Owing to its confidential nature, the specific terms of the agreement have never been made public.
What is known is that, during this period, more than 10 bishops have been appointed, and several formerly “underground” bishops have been officially recognized by the Chinese authorities.
Since the agreement’s conclusion, both parties — particularly the Holy See — have spoken of it in consistently favorable terms, describing it as the fruit of long years of dialogue.
Although the contents of the agreement remain unknown, the Gospel offers a principle by which its value may nonetheless be assessed: “You will know them by their fruits. A good tree bears good fruit, and a bad tree bears bad fruit” (Matthew 7:16-18). It is therefore legitimate to evaluate the agreement not by its intentions or rhetoric, but by the concrete outcomes it has produced.
According to publicly available information, the agreement appears to focus primarily on the appointment of bishops and the reconfiguration of dioceses. Under the Code of Canon Law, candidates for the episcopate must be distinguished by sound faith (firma fide), uphold good morals, and have a good reputation (Canon 378 §1).
More crucially, the final decision regarding a candidate’s suitability belongs to the Apostolic See (Canon 378 §2). Before assuming office, a bishop is also required to make a profession of faith and swear an oath of fidelity to the Apostolic See, according to a formula approved by the Holy See (Canon 380).
When these canonical norms are taken as a point of reference, developments following the agreement raise serious questions. In recent episcopal ordination ceremonies, appointment documents issued by the Chinese Bishops’ Conference have been publicly read, without explicit reference to a papal mandate.
Moreover, newly ordained bishops have sworn oaths pledging adherence to political principles, including “love of the motherland and the Church,” commitment to the policy of an “independent and self-governing Church,” endorsement of the direction of the “sinicization of Catholicism,” and dedication to the construction of a modern socialist state and the realization of national rejuvenation.
It is here that confusion and unease arise among Chinese Catholics. Are such political declarations compatible with the spirit and requirements of the agreement as understood by the Holy See?
If these principles are accepted, then what is called “unity” in the Chinese context amounts not to communion with Rome, but to the institutional construction of a new and independent Church — one structurally comparable to the Church of England following its 16th-century separation from the Holy See.
In recent years, the so-called “sinicization of Catholicism” has been actively promoted as official policy.
Viewed from a historical perspective, this initiative is not novel. Rather, it represents a familiar stage within the communist ideological project aimed at the eventual elimination of religion.
Beginning with the Soviet Union, communist regimes developed a four-step strategy toward religion: suppression, restriction, transformation, and ultimately eradication — a model later inherited and adapted by other communist states.
In the Chinese context, “sinicization” seeks to alter the Church at its core, reshaping its nature and mission so that it may function fully as an instrument of the state.
It is precisely this dynamic that Pope John Paul II diagnosed with clarity in Centesimus Annus:
The culture and praxis of totalitarianism also involve a rejection of the Church. The State or the party which claims to be able to lead history towards perfect goodness, and which sets itself above all values, cannot tolerate the affirmation of an objective criterion of good and evil beyond the will of those in power, since such a criterion, in given circumstances, could be used to judge their actions. This explains why totalitarianism attempts to destroy the Church, or at least to reduce her to submission, making her an instrument of its own ideological apparatus. (45)
The reality described in that encyclical is now unfolding in China.
Since the signing of the agreement, the words and actions of newly appointed bishops have increasingly exceeded the proper bounds of pastoral ministry. Their public statements often differ little from those of government officials.
Pulpits once dedicated to the proclamation of the Word of God and the formation of conscience have, under external pressure, been distorted into platforms for promotion and interpretation of state policy. In this process, the Church’s prophetic witness to truth is steadily weakened.
This transformation is further reinforced at the level of clerical formation. Official criteria for training future clergy emphasize that they must be “politically reliable, religiously competent, morally persuasive, and capable of playing a role at critical moments.”
Under such standards, an unavoidable question arises: Are these future priests being formed to serve the Church, or to serve the state?
Declassified Soviet archives provide a sobering historical parallel. After failing to eradicate the Orthodox Church outright, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union adopted a strategy of transformation.
A cohort of bishops loyal to the party was cultivated and dispatched to the West under the guise of religious exchange.
Their task was to promote the Soviet government’s narrative of religious freedom while quietly carrying out political missions assigned by the state.
Today, under the banner of dialogue, exchange and communion, Western churches offer platforms for officially approved Chinese bishops. Through cooperative programs and exchanges in priestly formation, seminarians and clergy are received and sent abroad.
History, however, stands as a stern warning. If vigilance is abandoned, the Trojan Horse may once again pass through the gates.
This historical warning is not merely an abstract analogy. Its consequences have already taken concrete form within the lived realities and institutional restructuring of the Catholic Church in China. Under prolonged political pressure, the underground Church carried out its pastoral mission at immense personal and communal cost. Yet the process of so-called “legalization” did not bring the moral redress or historical correction many had hoped for.
On the contrary, those who had borne the greatest risks for the faith were often retired, sidelined or reduced to auxiliary roles, while bishops long aligned with the principle of an “independent Church” retained authority and institutional prominence.
This misalignment between sacrifice and outcome has not healed past wounds but has generated new internal tensions. For many of the faithful, the result is both disheartening and deeply perplexing: Why are those who paid the highest price for conscience so swiftly marginalized, while accommodation continues to be rewarded?
Within this context of structural tension, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun’s efforts to convey the realities of the Church in China to Rome have assumed particular symbolic significance.
In 2020, during the pontificate of Pope Francis, Cardinal Zen — then in his late 80s and long recognized as a moral voice for Chinese Catholics — traveled to Rome seeking a private audience to express his concerns about the Sino-Vatican agreement, but was unable to secure a meeting.
Media reports at the time, accompanied by widely circulated photographs, showed him waiting for an extended period in the cold before eventually departing alone. The image captured was more than that of an elderly man with a stooped posture and a solitary silhouette; it functioned as a stark metaphor.
It evoked the fate of those voices that have persistently appealed to conscience and truth, yet find themselves increasingly marginalized by political calculation and ecclesiastical diplomacy.
For many Chinese Catholics, this episode came to symbolize a tragic dimension of the Church’s present condition in China — not defeat through open confrontation, but loss through quiet neglect.
That episode has since been reframed by subsequent events. In January 2026, Cardinal Zen, now in his 90s, received a private audience with Pope Leo XIV, a development many have interpreted as a meaningful gesture in light of the earlier refusal.
The broader significance of such gestures is illuminated by the principles the Pope has articulated elsewhere, particularly in his evaluation of the Church in Germany’s Synodal Path.
Genuine synodality, he argued, is not the manufacture of consensus around a predetermined direction, but a disciplined willingness to listen to dissenting — even unsettling — voices, lest dominant positions exclude others through institutional or discursive power.
When this criterion is applied to the situation of the Church in China, the issue no longer concerns the handling of isolated cases but points instead to a more fundamental ecclesiological dilemma.
If certain voices are consistently marginalized by structural arrangements, and those who have borne the highest cost for their faith are excluded from meaningful dialogue, then the moral and theological credibility of “synodality” itself must be questioned.
It is precisely here that the risks of judgment become apparent. In a highly politicized context, symbolic gestures detached from lived realities are easily reinterpreted or appropriated by external powers.
Against this backdrop, hopes for a papal visit to China appear less a product of prudent discernment than of emotional projection.
At present, such a visit would be unlikely to improve the Church’s concrete condition and would instead risk serving as a symbolic instrument within official narratives purporting to demonstrate religious freedom.
Pope Leo, for his part, has emphasized that he does not yet have a settled approach to China.
In the short term, he said he intends to “continue the policy that the Holy See has followed for some years now,” while seeking “a clearer understanding of how the Church can continue the Church’s mission,” including the experience of Chinese Catholics who have long faced “oppression or difficulty in living their faith freely.”