China and an American Pope in Rome

The appointment of the United States-born Robert Prevost as the new Pope, Leo XIV has more than religious significance to it. It’s also a matter of geopolitical significance at a time when China is increasingly contending with the US for global domination.

There are at least three aspects that deserve attention — the relationship between China and the Vatican, the Global South dimension, and the political challenge to China’s ruling Communist Party (CPC) that Leo’s background and agenda might pose.

Bilateral relations

The Vatican does not have diplomatic ties with China — it recognises Taiwan — but it has long tried to establish a working relationship with China’s communist regime in the belief that this served the interests of Chinese Catholics. This was in keeping with the model the Vatican had adopted in taking care of its faithful in other repressive, authoritarian regimes. But communist China has seldom paid heed to Vatican sensitivities or, indeed, to the well-being of its Catholics.

The CPC controls the Catholic Church in its territory and appoints bishops through the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. While Leo XIV’s predecessor, Francis negotiated a major agreement with China in 2018 — renewed for the third time last October — in which both sides would agree on the appointment of bishops, in practice, the Holy See has been forced to rubber-stamp Chinese appointments. In fact, Beijing announced the appointment of two new bishops a week after Francis had died and before Leo XIV had been elected. Meanwhile, the arrest and persecution of members of the underground Church as well as attempts to Sincize the Church have continued.

At 69 years of age, Leo XIV can be expected to have a long tenure. But he will need to understand the nature of the Communist Party-State in China better than his predecessors. The need for peace he emphasised in his opening remarks as Pope should not blind him to the reality of the CPC as not just atheist but anti-religion, and devoted to a zero-sum view of the world.

Global South

The election of a US Pope poses a challenge to China’s attempt to win leadership of the Global South.

The College of Cardinals that elected Leo XIV was the most diverse — geographically and racially — it has been in the history of the Catholic Church. The fact that an American was chosen by such a diverse body and that too, as quickly as his two predecessors were, suggests that he enjoys wide backing within the Church. No doubt, the cardinals were able to look beyond Leo XIV’s US roots and noted that he had spent decades of his life in missionary work in Peru, even becoming a naturalised citizen of the country. As such, he is as much a member of the developing world as he is of the world’s only superpower. But that is not how China will see things.

A Burmese, a Filipino, and a Congolese were in contention for the papacy, but the fact that an American won is going to be seen in China as vindication of the Chinese Party-State’s view of the world as being divided into camps and of the Catholic Church serving as a hostile instrument of the West.

If Leo XIV is going to push forward his belief of “a missionary church, a church that builds bridges”, this will be a problem for China — the CPC regime is no less missionary in its zeal to win adherents and to promote its image worldwide, particularly in the Global South. Its political departments are engaged in building bridges, too, not in the interests of ‘charity, dialogue and love’, but of regime survival.

The Chinese will both play up the Pope’s US origins as somehow making him less worthy of his position, and use his remarks in the past criticising the Trump administration for its positions on immigrants or on climate change, for example. It will do so without any sense of irony whatsoever, trying to paint an overall picture of moral decline and failure of global leadership by the West that only the CPC and not the Catholic Church can address.

Political challenger

The most important challenge that Leo XIV might pose to China’s ruling communists might be the specific agenda that he brings to his role based on his past work and his identity as a member of the Augustinian order. In a 2023 interview, Cardinal Prevost said, “we must not hide behind an idea of authority that no longer makes sense today.” He was speaking in the context of the need for church leaders to be connected to the masses. But this might as well be a statement of the shortcomings of CPC leadership in China.

A series of behaviours of Chinese citizens in recent years — the zero-Covid protests, the rebellion of its youth against a hyper-competitive work culture, and weak consumer confidence in the Chinese economy — suggest “an idea of authority that no longer makes sense today” in China.

The new Pope’s choice of ‘Leo’ as his name is no less significant. The last Pope Leo authored a pro-worker 1891 encyclical. Leo XIII’s ‘On Capital and Labor’, titled in the style that Mao Zedong’s tracts would adopt a few decades later, opens with the “spirit of revolutionary change” of the era to talk about “the condition of the working classes”, including the need for fair wages, reasonable working conditions, and their right to join unions. These are all problems in China today — its economic crisis, is not just a crisis of consumer confidence but a crisis of the working class.

Conclusion

The Vatican might be an insignificant player in the international state system, but the politically astute, alert entity that it is, the CPC will also be aware of the implications of Leo XIV’s agenda and statements for its interests abroad and its legitimacy at home.

(Jabin T Jacob is Associate Professor, Department of International Relations and Governance Studies, and Director, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR. X: @jabinjacobt.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.