Pope Francis approves new bishop of Shanghai Vatican reprimanded China To transfer them there without consultation, in violation of bilateral agreements.
A Vatican statement said on Saturday that the Pope has appointed Bishop Joseph Shen Bin to head the vacant Shanghai diocese.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said in a separately released interview that Shen was not consulted when he was moved from Haimen Diocese in Jiangsu Province to Shanghai.
Parolin said the unilateral move goes against the “spirit of dialogue and cooperation” set out in the 2018 landmark agreement on the naming of bishops.
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Orthodox Catholics have criticized the secret agreement as selling out to communist China, but the Vatican has defended it as an imperfect means of negotiating with the authorities for the good of Chinese Catholics.
The pope had decided to approve Shen “for the greater good” of the Shanghai diocese and because Shen was a “respected priest”, Parolin said in interviews with internal Vatican media outlets.
Parolin reminded his Chinese counterparts that the agreement, which has been renewed twice since it was first signed, “revolves around the basic principle of consensus regarding decisions concerning bishops.”
The Shanghai controversy is the latest spat between the Vatican and China over the transfer of a bishop.
In November, the Vatican accused Chinese officials of violating a 2018 agreement by installing a bishop in a diocese not recognized by the Holy See.
The accord was an attempt to bridge a long-standing divide between an underground flock loyal to the Pope and the state-backed official church in mainland China. For the first time since the 1950s, both sides recognized the Pope as the supreme leader of the Catholic Church.
Shen, 53, is the chairman of the Chinese Council of Bishops, which is believed to be controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. He was installed in Shanghai in April without the permission of the Vatican.
The Chinese bishops’ council is not formally recognized by the Vatican, and in his interview on Saturday, Parolin said the Holy See wanted to see the establishment of a Chinese Catholic bishops’ conference with statutes similar to those in other countries.
Those statues, he said, should include regular contact between Chinese bishops and the pope.
The pope will next month travel to Mongolia, which was part of China until 1921 and has good relations with Beijing. Diplomats say the country, which has only 1,300 Catholics, could mediate with China.