Catholicism in China

Up From the Underground: "About 5 million Chinese Catholics belong to government-approved 'patriotic' churches that reject the Vatican's full authority, according to the Chinese government. The Vatican estimates that 8 million others worship in illegal underground churches that have defied the Communist Party by remaining loyal to the pope. And yet the church's position here is probably stronger than at any time since the 1949 Communist revolution, when Beijing broke ties with the Vatican. Though police continue to harass and imprison priests and bishops in the underground church, several have been allowed to operate openly. At the same time, the Vatican has slowly infiltrated the government's official church, winning over many of its clergymen and exerting unprecedented influence over its operations...

Chinese leadership's [has a] traditional suspicion of the church as a hostile force that helped subvert Communist rule in Eastern Europe and is determined to do the same in China...

All but nine of the 70 bishops in the government's official church have secretly declared their loyalty to Rome and are now recognized by the Vatican, according to Ren Yanli, China's leading scholar of the church. And almost all of the new bishops approved by the government in the past five years were secretly named in advance by John Paul, said one of the bishops, who spoke on condition of anonymity...

Liu Bainan, vice chairman of the body that runs the official church, said the government remained wary. "We remember what happened in Poland and the former Soviet Union," he said. "No one can deny the pope and the Vatican played an important role there, and those who promoted the great changes in Eastern Europe want it to happen in China as well."