We Catholics were deeply scandalized when Pope Francis sent then-Cardinal McCarrick (yes, the child molester now hiding from reporters) to negotiate a deal with Communist China. Its terms remain partly secret. That piece of transparency hearkens back to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Two apparent enemies inked a deal against the West, the secret provisions including the carve-up of free Poland.
Among the public terms of the China deal, the Vatican surrendered its power to pick Chinese bishops. It turned that key right over to the atheist Communist Party, which cultivates collaborator priests it can trust. This deal, which hero of the faith Cardinal Zen called an “abandonment” of the faithful, “underground” Church, gained Catholics no new protections. In fact, the Chinese government has stepped up persecutions of Catholics and others. It’s demolishing churches, burning Bibles, and forcing churches to replace Christian images with Communist Chinese icons.
What did the Vatican gain? A whistleblower reports that $2 billion went from wealthy China to this cash-strapped, scandal plagued papacy. On a public level, Pope Francis gained an ally against the Trump administration, and the capitalist West.
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