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The Vatican announced Tuesday that it has renewed its agreement with China on the appointment of Catholic bishops for an additional four years.

The renewal comes days after a report from the Hudson Institute detailed how seven Catholic bishops in China have been detained without due process, while other bishops have experienced intense pressure, surveillance, and police investigations since the Sino-Vatican agreement was initially signed six years ago.

With the extension, the Sino-Vatican agreement will now remain in effect until Oct. 22, 2028.

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A new report sheds light on the repression faced by 10 Catholic bishops in China who have resisted the Chinese Communist Party’s attempt to exert control over religious matters since the 2018 China-Vatican agreement on the appointment of bishops. 

The report, authored by Nina Shea for the Hudson Institute, documents the harrowing experiences of Vatican-approved bishops who have suffered detention without due process, surveillance, police investigations, and banishments from their dioceses for refusal to submit to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), a state-managed group controlled by the CCP’s United Front Work Department. 

“This report shows that religious repression of the Catholic Church in China has intensified since the 2018 China-Vatican agreement on the appointment of bishops,” Shea said.

“Beijing targeted these 10 bishops after they opposed the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which requires its members to pledge independence from the Holy See,” she added.

The Hudson Institute published the report days before the expected Vatican announcement of whether the Holy See will renew its provisional agreement with Beijing on the appointment of bishops. 

The provisional agreement was first signed in 2018 and then renewed in 2020 and 2022. The most recent two-year renewal signed in 2022 expires this week on Oct. 22. 

News that a new coadjutor bishop of Beijing is expected to be installed on Oct. 25 in agreement with the Holy See suggests that the Sino-Vatican agreement is likely to be renewed.

The report also outlines steps that U.S. policymakers can take to advocate for the release of detained Catholic bishops in China.

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A new report details the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to “exert total control” over the Catholic Church and other religious faiths within its borders and to “forcibly eradicate religious elements” that the party deems contrary to its political and policy agenda.

The analysis, published by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) last week, asserts that the CCP’s “sinicization of religion” policy consistently violates the internationally protected right to freedom of religion. The term sinicization means to conform something to Chinese culture, but the policy essentially subordinates faiths to “the CCP’s political agenda and Marxist vision for religion,” according to the report.

Chinese officials have ordered the removal of crosses from churches and have replaced images of Christ and the Virgin Mary with images of President Xi Jinping, according to the report. They have also censored religious texts, forced members of the clergy to preach CCP ideology, and mandated the display of CCP slogans within churches. 

To subordinate religions to the party, the government forces religious groups to enroll in various “patriotic religious associations” and their local branches. For Catholic churches, this means enrolling in the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China, which is officially under the control of China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs and the CCP’s United Front Work Department.

Anyone who practices religion outside of the state-approved associations is considered to be in a “cult” and subjected to anti-cult provisions in Chinese law, a policy that has resulted in mass arrests and imprisonment, according to the report. Chinese officials have enforced the anti-cult provisions against underground Catholics who do not recognize the authority of the government-backed clergy and the distortion of the faith.

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Young people in Shanghai, China, took to the streets in Halloween costumes over the weekend despite rainy weather and a grumpy ban on holiday decorations, costumes, and anything with “horror or violence-related elements.”

Shanghai’s revelers made a point of defying those bans, turning out in costumes that ranged from period Chinese garb to horror movie icons, superheroes, and Japanese anime characters.