Vatican pact with Beijing weighs on papal frontrunner
Cardinal Pietro Parolin was the architect of a deal with China that could scupper his chances to succeed Pope Francis
One country, far from Rome, is emerging as a potentially significant factor in deciding the outcome of this week’s papal conclave: China.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the late Pope Francis’s right-hand man for more than a decade, has emerged among bookmakers as one of the early favourites to succeed his former boss.
But Parolin’s signature achievement while running the Vatican — a 2018 deal between the Holy See and the Chinese Communist party — now looms large over his prospects.
The 70-year-old Italian prelate engineered the deal which was intended to resolve a decades-long stand off, and prevent a schism between underground churches in China loyal to the pope and an official church that obeyed Beijing.
His compromise, negotiated over years, gave Beijing a formal say in the appointment of Catholic bishops in China. It was a step critics such as Hong Kong’s cardinal Joseph Zen see as a grave error of judgment that insulted the sacrifices made by China’s Catholics.
“Generations of Chinese Catholics have been martyred for their refusal to accept Communist control of the Catholic church,” said John Allen Jr, editor of Crux, a Catholic news website. “Others have been imprisoned, tortured, harassed and persecuted . . . and some of them regard this deal as a betrayal of their suffering.”
Atheist Chinese Communist apparatchiks, Allen added, should be “the last people in the world that you would want to be poking their nose in the church’s tent”.
Despite this, Vatican watchers consider the mild-mannered Parolin — a veteran Vatican diplomat before Francis chose him to run the Holy See — as one of the leading figures in the papal succession contest. Still, he may struggle to eventually secure the two-thirds majority of the 133 votes required to secure the papacy.
“He is a very strong candidate — the strongest right now,” said Iacopo Scaramuzzi, author of several books on Catholic church politics. “Cardinal Parolin is a mediator — both because of his role, and because of his character.”
While Parolin led bookmakers’ listings for weeks since Francis’s death, the odds have since moved in favour of Cardinal Luis Tagle of the Philippines, putting the two cardinals pretty much neck and neck.
Born in northern Italy, Parolin entered seminary at age 14; studied canon law in Rome, then in 1986, began his diplomatic career for the Holy See with postings to Nigeria and Mexico.
He returned to the Vatican in 1993 to manage relations with various European countries. A decade later, he was appointed under secretary of state for states, responsible for directing the Holy See’s fraught relations with countries like Vietnam, North Korea, Israel and China.
Parolin was mentored by an older generation of experienced Vatican diplomats, steeped in the subtle art of seeking to influence authoritarian regimes without alienating them.
“They created a doctrine of how to deal with dictators: a doctrine that says you have to talk with everyone, and use every possible opening — every possible opportunity — that you have to deal even with the devil,” said Massimo Faggioli, an expert on the Catholic church at Villanova University.
Parolin was posted as papal nuncio to Venezuela in 2009. When Francis was elected pope in 2013, Parolin was made secretary of state — the Holy See’s de facto prime minister — putting him at the nerve centre of the church, and the late pope’s efforts to reform it.
Through his career, China, whose Catholic faithful are currently estimated at between 6mn and 12mn, was a recurring concern. Many Chinese Catholics went underground during the bloody years of Maoist rule and the Cultural Revolution.
By the time religious practice was tolerated again in the 1980s, Chinese Catholics were split between “underground” churches loyal to the Vatican, and officially recognised churches with bishops appointed by the state’s Catholic Patriotic Association.
Historian Agostino Giovagnoli said Francis, like his predecessors John Paul II and Benedict, all sought rapprochement with Beijing to heal this divide, leading to decades of intermittent negotiations, mostly carried out by Parolin himself.
“There has been a continuity among those three popes in the approach towards China,” he said. “Parolin fulfilled his duty and obeyed their will.”
“Catholic believers were in conflict; the community was divided,” he said. “Now they can celebrate mass together; the faithful are not in conflict among themselves, share the rites. The deal was the lesser of two evils.”
Not all agree. Lucia Cheung, research assistant at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Catholic Studies, said critics believed the deal with Beijing was a “trap for the Holy See”.
“Beijing would get whoever they want as the bishops, not really respecting the will of the Church and the required virtues for such a position,” she added.
Francesco Sisci, an expert on the Vatican’s relations with China, said Beijing had also dragged its feet on the appointment process, leaving many dioceses without agreed bishops and deeply disappointing the Holy See. “It was too much investment for too little result,” Sisci said.
One of the deal’s fiercest critics Zen, who was arrested in Hong Kong in 2022 for his support for the city’s pro-democracy protests, has travelled to Rome since Francis’s death.
At 93 he is too old to vote in the conclave but he is participating in the preliminary debates on the church’s future. Analysts believe he may advocate for an uncompromising pope, willing to take a stand against autocratic leaders.
The Vatican’s deal with China “is most important diplomatic achievement of Pope Francis’s pontificate and Parolin is clearly at the centre of that. He owns it”, said Faggioli.
“Some people think it’s been a very good thing for the church. But some see it as a sign of weakness and have expectations of the church to take a less diplomatic, more prophetic stance.”