China’s Patriotic Church and Leo’s Synodal Church are driving faithful Catholics underground

The High Priest of Hypocrisy, Leo XIV, has once again given Catholics another reason to ask who is really directing the Church in Communist China.

Any observer with two eyes and one brain cell can, of course, guess the answer.

On August 31, Paolo Liu Honggang was consecrated Bishop of Datong in Shanxi province. The Vatican confirmed that Leo had “appointed” Liu on August 10 after approving his candidacy “within the framework” of the secretive Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China.

These “appointments” are usually little more than the official ratification of candidates already acceptable to the Communist Red Dragon. Since the text of Cardinal Parolin’s Vatican-China agreement has never been made public, the precise mechanics of the process cannot be independently established.

Liu is the third Chinese bishop ordained in three months, and his consecration was reportedly the seventh episcopal consecration to take place under Leo since the 2025 conclave.

The machinery that produces these bishops within the state-recognized church structure — the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) — casts one of the darkest shadows over the synodal post-conciliar “church.”

The CCPA operates under the supervision of the Communist regime and explicitly commits itself to supporting the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). One of the initiatives that flows from this relationship is a program called “Sinicization.” The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has described it as the “complete subordination of religious groups to the CCP’s political agenda and Marxist vision for religion.”

Recent testimony collected by historian Anthony E. Clark and published at The Catholic World Report painted an alarming picture of the situation confronting Chinese Catholics. His reporting described an environment in which government influence over ecclesiastical life has intensified to such an extent that underground Catholics fear for the very integrity and survival of the Faith.

Most disturbing is the reported response of underground Catholics themselves. According to Clark’s source — a Chinese bishop unaffiliated with the Patriotic Association — at least ten bishops have been secretly consecrated in Fujian province alone amid fears that an episcopate independent of Communist control could eventually disappear. The bishop reportedly described the situation there as a “state of emergency” and said the consecrations were undertaken to assure the survival of the Church.

The precise canonical circumstances of those consecrations remain unclear, including whether any possessed secret papal mandates, as Clark’s source does not publicly identify the bishops, their consecrators, or the circumstances of their ordinations. Nevertheless, their reported motivation is extraordinary as they are attempting to ensure the Catholic faith survives under Communist domination.

Thus, we see obvious parallels with what is currently taking place in the post-conciliar church, with true Catholics such as the SSPX and sedevacantists effectively forced “underground” and left with no choice but to consecrate Catholic bishops without apostate Rome’s permission.

Against this background emerges the simple fact that Leo’s continuation of the Vatican-China policy is completely indefensible. The Provisional Agreement was concluded under Francis in 2018, and its text remains unpublished. It was renewed in 2020 and 2022, and then, most recently, in October 2024 for another four years.

Although Leo did not sign that renewal himself, he continues to lend it legitimacy by repeatedly implementing it through episcopal appointments instead of repudiating or substantially challenging the controversial experiment inherited from Francis and the aforementioned Cardinal Parolin.

Enjoying Integrity? Donate Today!

Beijing itself declared after Leo’s first Chinese episcopal appointment that the agreement was being “smoothly implemented.” China’s Foreign Ministry said in June 2025 that the two sides had increased “mutual understanding and trust” and that Beijing wished to continue improving China-Vatican relations.

One of the agreement’s greatest critics, Cardinal Joseph Zen, famously described the Vatican’s accommodation with Beijing as an “incredible betrayal” of faithful Chinese Catholics.

There are also other parallels between the Synodal Church and the situation in China that are difficult to ignore.

In China, the CCPA nominally remains the visible, state-recognized expression of the “Catholic” Church, but in reality it operates under a Communist political system that demands conformity with its ideology.

A slightly softer, but disturbingly similar, reality exists within the matrix of the Bergolian and now Prevostian ecclesial project.

While Leo and his Synodal Church assiduously retain the optics of the Catholic Church, he enthusiastically has continued the language of “ecological conversion,” synodality, and international multilateralism inherited from Francis.

For the United Nations COP30 climate conference last year, Leo’s message explicitly urged states to accelerate implementation of the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It called for “cohesive and forward-looking multilateralism” and advocated the development of a new “centered international financial architecture.”

Little doubt therefore exists that the Vatican has become a willing and enthusiastic puppet of the United Nations and its ideological program.

Likewise in China, Communist authorities demand a Catholicism compatible with socialist political priorities, while in the West, an increasingly bureaucratic and synodal ecclesiastical establishment is remarkably comfortable speaking the language of UN-style environmentalism, global governance, and technocratic control.

In both cases, the supernatural mission of the Church has been subordinated — if it were possible — to the fashionable political program of the age.

Both Chinese underground Catholics and Traditional Catholics across the world have become victims of the Vatican’s obsession with reshaping itself according to the World instead of the opposite.