Gallagher: China Pact's Flaws Clear, Dialogue Goes On
He said all Chinese bishops are now in communion with Rome, and the 19th bishop under the pact was ordained despite Cardinal Zen's continuing rejection.
Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Holy See’s secretary for relations with states, said in Rome on Tuesday, Oct. 27, that the imperfections of the 2018 Vatican-China agreement on bishop appointments “are evident,” yet insisted there remains “a commitment to persevere in dialogue.”
Gallagher said the dialogue with Beijing “is not easy.” He pointed, however, to a result the Holy See regards as decisive: all Chinese bishops are now in communion with the pope—an improvement over the fractured situation that prevailed before the provisional accord took effect.
An Unpublished Pact, Repeatedly Renewed
The agreement has never been published in full. It was renewed in 2020 and 2022, then again in 2024 for a four-year term running through Oct. 2028. Its focus remains the appointment of bishops on the mainland, a process that continues to operate even as its precise terms stay hidden from the faithful and from much of the wider Church.
Gallagher also stated that the Vatican is not willing to pay the price currently demanded for establishing any permanent presence in Beijing. The remark set a clear limit: dialogue will continue, but not on terms that would bind the Holy See beyond what it judges acceptable.
On Oct. 15, Father Ignatius Ding Zuyao was ordained bishop of Haimen with papal approval. He is the 19th bishop selected under the deal, a concrete sign that the mechanism remains in use and that Rome still seeks to keep the Chinese hierarchy united to the Successor of Peter.
Persistent Warnings From Cardinal Zen and Others
Critics have not fallen silent. Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, and religious-freedom advocates continue to warn that the agreement has strengthened the Chinese Communist Party’s control over the Church while leaving underground communities in disarray. Those communities, long faithful to Rome at heavy personal cost, remain a central concern for Catholics who fear that regularization on paper has come at the expense of genuine freedom of worship.
The Holy See’s public line, reaffirmed on Tuesday, is perseverance rather than rupture: an imperfect instrument placed at the service of ecclesial unity. Gallagher did not deny the shortcomings; he refused to treat them as grounds to walk away.
In the same exchange, Gallagher described Pope Leo XIV’s Oct. 13 surgery as “a bit of a game changer” that had made the pontiff’s mortality plain, and said a papal visit to the United States could take place “in the not too distant future.”