Chinese officials are ramping up efforts to force underground Catholic communities into the government-controlled church while expanding surveillance and imposing travel restrictions on the nation’s approximately 12 million Catholics, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Wednesday.
The comprehensive report indicates this intensified campaign is part of a broader decade-long initiative to ensure religious groups and independent churches demonstrate allegiance to the officially atheist Communist Party.
China’s Catholic population has historically been split between a government-sanctioned church that rejected Vatican authority and a clandestine church that maintained loyalty to Rome despite facing years of persecution.
In 2018, Pope Francis attempted to reduce tensions between the Vatican and China through an agreement that granted the state-controlled church input in selecting bishops — a responsibility traditionally held exclusively by the pope.
However, despite this arrangement, “Catholics in China face escalating repression that violates their religious freedoms,” stated Yalkun Uluyol, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Pope Leo XIV should urgently review the agreement and press Beijing to end the persecution and intimidation of underground churches, clergy, and worshippers.”
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni did not provide an immediate response Wednesday when asked about the report. China’s Foreign Ministry also did not respond to Associated Press inquiries.
Human Rights Watch noted that its researchers cannot enter China, explaining that the report draws from individuals outside China “who had firsthand knowledge of Catholic life in China,” along with religious freedom experts and Catholic scholars.
The 2018 agreement allows Beijing to suggest bishop candidates that the pope may reject, though the complete text remains confidential.
Last June, one month after assuming the papacy, Leo made his initial Chinese bishop appointment under this agreement. In a later interview, Leo indicated he would maintain the agreement “in the short term.”
“I’m also in ongoing dialogue with a number of people, Chinese, on both sides of some of the issues that are there,” Leo explained. “It’s a very difficult situation. In the long term, I don’t pretend to say this is what I will and will not do, but after two months, I’ve already begun having discussions at several levels on that topic.”
Since 2018, Human Rights Watch reports that Chinese authorities have coerced underground Catholic communities to join the state-controlled Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association “by arbitrarily detaining, forcibly disappearing … and subjecting underground Catholic bishops and priests to house arrest.”
The report detailed several of these incidents, citing accounts from unnamed individuals who had departed China.
According to Human Rights Watch, the government has also strengthened ideological oversight, monitoring, limitations on religious practices, and foreign connections within official churches. Recent regulations implemented in December require state approval for international travel by Catholic clergy.
The Chinese government formally acknowledges five religions — Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam — while maintaining strict supervision over them.
In 2016, President Xi Jinping announced plans to “Sinicize” the nation’s religions — expanding oversight and ideological control to align religious practices with Communist Party ideology and authority.
Following this announcement, Human Rights Watch claims authorities have destroyed hundreds of church structures or their crosses, blocked believers from meeting in unofficial churches, limited Bible access, and seized unauthorized religious materials.
The Sinicization initiative has also resulted in harsh suppression of Tibetan Buddhism and Islam, Human Rights Watch reported.
In October, authorities detained a pastor from a prominent underground Christian church, according to his daughter, a church pastor, and a religious monitoring organization.
They reported that Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri of Zion Church was arrested at his residence in Guangxi province, alongside dozens of other church leaders throughout China.
Zion Church ranks among the largest unregistered “underground” or house churches. These congregations violate government requirements mandating worship only in registered facilities.
Last month, ChinaAid — a U.S.-based organization promoting religious freedom in China — called on President Donald Trump to demand Mingri’s release before his scheduled May meeting with Xi.
“The Chinese Communist Party has escalated its systematic campaign to eradicate independent religious life,” said Bob Fu, ChinaAid’s president. “The United States must respond with consequences — not just concern.”
