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A bishop consecrated in China under the Sino-Vatican accord: the liberty of the Church in question
A bishop was consecrated in China under the Sino-Vatican accord; we measure the arrangement against the liberty the Church holds from Christ alone.
A new bishop was consecrated this Wednesday, 22 July 2026, for the diocese of Chifeng, in China. Appointed by the Supreme Pontiff on 15 June, his candidacy had first been approved under the terms of the provisional agreement concluded between the Holy See and the People's Republic of China. He had served this diocese for years and had administered it since 2021.
The Church has always held that the choice and consecration of her bishops belong to the Apostolic See alone, free of every civil power. « Neither doth any man take the honour to himself, but he that is called by God, as Aaron was » : the office of shepherd is not seized, not negotiated, not received from the hand of the world ; it descends from God through His Church. Writing in former days on the Church in China, the Magisterium recalled that no temporal authority — still less a power hostile to the faith — may claim a right in the naming of shepherds without wounding the very constitution that Christ gave to His Church.
Measured against this rule, the news calls less for applause than for prayer. That a State professing atheism, one that keeps the Church under surveillance, should be granted by an accord a share in the approval of those who are to be made bishops : this touches the liberty that the Bride of Christ holds only from her Bridegroom, and not from the princes of this world. We judge neither intentions nor souls ; we describe the arrangement, and, by the measure of constant doctrine, we find it heavy with peril. Our thought goes first to the faithful who have remained hidden, who kept the faith at the price of prison and silence, and for whom the one consolation remains what no power can seize : the good Shepherd who giveth his life for his sheep.
Sources. Pius XII, encyclical letter Ad Apostolorum Principis (1958), on the Church in China and the appointment of bishops by the Apostolic See alone ; Epistle to the Hebrews, V, 4 ; Gospel according to Saint John, X, 11.