A desire to deal with Beijing led to papal silence on human rights.
By Benedict Rogers | Foreign Policy | April 28, 2025
As the Catholic Church—and the world—mourns the death of Pope Francis, reflects on his legacy, and looks to the future with the election of a new pontiff, the Vatican would do well to review its approach to China.
Francis’s pontificate contains much for which advocates of human rights can be grateful. Yet the Vatican’s China policy is not one of them. A pope who spoke often about injustice and persecution around the world failed to speak on the atrocities in China.
Although vocal about Sudan, Yemen, Gaza, and Myanmar, his silence about the persecution of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and Christians across China was deafening, and a
conscious choice to look away.
There were numerous issues that directly concerned the church but where the pope still failed to comment, many of them linked to the dismantling of Hong Kong’s freedoms. He never prayed publicly for Hong Kong’s most prominent Catholic political prisoner, Jimmy Lai, nor met with Lai’s son Sebastien. When Hong Kong’s bishop emeritus, Cardinal Joseph Zen, traveled to Rome for an audience in 2020, it was never granted.
What could explain this?
Read the full article at Foreign Policy Magazine