- LIFE SITE NEWS - Sep 22, 2020 -
Dorothy Cummings McLean
‘The Holy See has a unique capacity and duty to focus the world’s attention on human rights violations, especially those perpetrated by totalitarian regimes like Beijing’s’
WASHINGTON, DC, September 22, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) ― The United States Secretary of State has published an essay begging the Vatican to speak out against human rights abuses in China.
Michael R. “Mike” Pompeo, the US Secretary of State since late April 2018, submitted the essay, titled “China’s Catholics and the Church’s Moral Witness” to First Things. It appeared online on September 18.
The principal thrust of the essay is that the Vatican, which has boldly spoken out against repressive political regimes before, must do so again on behalf of people abused by communist China. “Now more than ever, the Chinese people need the Vatican’s moral witness and authority in support of China’s religious believers,” Pompeo wrote.
“The Holy See has a unique capacity and duty to focus the world’s attention on human rights violations, especially those perpetrated by totalitarian regimes like Beijing’s. In the late twentieth century, the Church’s power of moral witness helped inspire those who liberated central and eastern Europe from communism, and those who challenged autocratic and authoritarian regimes in Latin America and East Asia,” he continued.
“That same power of moral witness should be deployed today with respect to the Chinese Communist Party.”
This month Vatican diplomats will be sitting down with Chinese officials to discuss their 2018 concordat. Pompeo explained to readers that the Vatican had hoped to improve conditions for Chinese Catholics by coming to an agreement with China about the appointment of bishops.
Unfortunately, that did not happen.
“Two years on, it’s clear that the Sino-Vatican agreement has not shielded Catholics from the Party’s depredations, to say nothing of the Party’s horrific treatment of Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong devotees, and other religious believers,” Pompeo wrote.
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