In the nearly four years since he was appointed bishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Stephen Chow Sau-yan has worked to foster communication between his diocese and other dioceses in mainland China.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, became part of the People’s Republic of China in 1997. However, the diocese has distinguished itself for being a staunch defender of religious freedom and countering Beijing’s anti-religious policy.

However, Cardinal Chow, who has led the diocese of Hong Kong since May 2021, decided to adopt a different approach, seeking instead to serve as a bridge between Catholics and civil authorities in both Hong Kong and the mainland.

So far, Cardinal Chow has connected with three dioceses on the mainland.

First, he visited the Archdiocese of Beijing in April 2023, which Archbishop Joseph Li Shan of Beijing reciprocated with a visit to Hong Kong in November 2023.

Then, in April 2024, Cardinal Chow visited the Dioceses of Guangzhou, Shanthou and Shenzhen, which are in the Guangdong region. Situated on the coast of South China, Guandong is where the famous late-16th century missionary, Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci, entered China.

The cardinal’s visit to Shanghai last month is the third of its kind, but it also carries a special meaning.

Cardinal Chow’s bridge-building role, however, comes at an ambivalent time for China-Holy See relations. On the one hand, Pope Francis has extended a helping hand to China by appointing a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences from mainland China, the second in two years. This appointment is one of the various gestures made by Pope Francis toward Beijing in a rapprochement that led to the Sino-Vatican agreement for the appointment of bishops. The agreement, signed for the first time in 2018, has been renewed three times ad experimentum for two years and a fourth time for four years.

On the other hand, Beijing responds to this outstretched hand by maintaining the same stance toward the Catholic faith. A few days ago, news broke of the arrest of a prelate not aligned with the Chinese government, Bishop Peter Shao Zumin of Whenzhou, accused of having celebrated a Mass defined as “illegal.”

Cardinal Chow’s work, in short, risks crashing into a complex reality. Beyond the well-established dialogue with the Holy See, China does not seem to want to change its attitude on human rights issues. And it is a safe bet that the China dossier will be one of those discussed when, one day, the cardinals meet before the election of a new pope.

Visit to Shanghai

Cardinal Chow visited the Diocese of Shanghai for five days, starting on Feb. 24. Shanghai is one of the most important Catholic dioceses of China, and is home to the national shrine of Our Lady of Sheshan.

On Feb. 25, he visited that shrine, where, together with Bishop Joseph Shen Bin of Shanghai , he prayed for the health of the Holy Father. The images of the two bishops kneeling in prayer in the shrine, published by the Hong Kong Catholic weekly Sunday Examiner, had a strong media impact.

The Shanghai bishop was transferred to the diocese in April 2023 by the Chinese government without the Vatican’s approval. Pope Francis later reinstated the appointment, confirming it several months later.

Since 2022, Bishop Shen Bin has been appointed president of the Council of Chinese Bishops, a state-approved bishops’ conference. Previously, he was vice president of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which was founded by the Chinese Communist Party and is under the United Front Work Department (a department of the party’s Central Committee). The bishop was also at the Vatican in May 2024, speaking at a conference on the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Council, with a speech that reiterated the importance of the “sinicization” of the Church in China.

Cardinal Chow’s visit began on Feb. 24 at St. Ignatius Cathedral in Xujiahui and included a visit to Tangzhen Church, one of Shanghai's Jubilee Year pilgrimage sites, and Sheshan Seminary. During the visit, the delegation also visited several places of worship of other religious traditions, including Songjiang Mosque, the Christian Sinicization Practice Center, Longhua Buddhist Temple and Cheng-huang Taoist Temple.

Reflecting on the visit, Cardinal Chow wrote in the Sunday Examiner newspaper that the Shanghai Diocese maintains a delicate balance between the Church and civil society and he encouraged the Church in Hong Kong to likewise approach dialogue with different sectors with an open and collaborative spirit.

Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Ha Chi-shing of Hong Kong, for his part, highlighted the similarities between Hong Kong and Shanghai, cosmopolitan cities that face the challenge of evangelization and developing pastoral ministries, especially for multilingual communities, in urban settings.

Bishop Arrested in Mainland China

While Cardinal Chow was in Shanghai, news of the arrest of Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, in southeastern China. Unrecognized by the Chinese government, Bishop Shao was arrested on the orders of Beijing’s National Security Bureau following the opening Mass of the Holy Year celebrated on Dec. 27, 2024. The Mass, attended by about 200 faithful, was considered “illegal” by Beijing because it violated Article 71 of the Regulations on Religious Affairs.

Initially, the authorities fined Bishop Shao 200,000 yuan (about $27,600). The bishop contested the fine, which led to his arrest, to “ensure the safety” of the bishop, according to the Office of Homeland Security.

The arrest came after a series of pressures on the diocese. The agency Asia News, affiliated with the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions missionaries, reported that the National Security Office and the Department of Religious Affairs interfered with a pilgrimage of several hundred people organized by the parish of Cangnan, under the jurisdiction of the Church of Wenzhou.

The Diocese of Wenzhou, described as an underground diocese, has experienced in recent Sundays raids by plainclothes police officers, who prevented children and adolescents from entering Sunday Mass.

Bishop Shao had refused to join the Chinese Communist Party-controlled Patriotic Association. He was appointed coadjutor bishop in 2007 to succeed Bishop Vincent Zhu Wei-Fang, who died in September 2016. Chinese authorities consider the see “vacant,” and consider the local Catholic community to be led by Father Ma Xianshi.

Bishop Shao has been arrested several times in recent years. On Feb. 25, the bishop sent a letter to the entire diocese inviting the faithful to pray for Pope Francis.

The Pope’s Outstretched Hand

For its part, the Holy See continues along the line of dialogue. On March 7, Meng Anming, professor of Developmental Biology at Tsinghua University in Beijing, was included among the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The academy is pontifical, but the idea is to include sensibilities of all kinds.

It should not be surprising, then, that if one scrolls through the list of academics, one finds very diverse personalities, many of them non-Catholic.

However, the appointment of a Chinese scholar is striking because it also means that Beijing has accepted it. It is part of a dialogue that Pope Francis wanted to intensify.

Mengis not the first from China to be included among the members of the Vatican Academy. Before him, in early June 2023, Tongdong Bai, a Chinese political scientist who tries to explain geopolitics according to the dictates of neo-Confucianism, was invited to join.

At the end of that same month, the same Pontifical Academy hosted the workshop “Dialogue between civilizations and common goods,” to understand emerging geopolitical realities such as China and India from the point of view of their own culture.

But the approach maneuver had begun earlier. In 2017, at Casina Pio IV, home of the academy, an international conference on organ trafficking was held, attended by two Chinese delegates, one of whom was Huang Jiefu, president of the Chinese National Committee on Organ Donation and Transplantation and former Chinese vice minister of health.

Some observers consider this participation as a decisive contact in view of the Sino-Vatican agreement on the appointment of bishops, signed in 2018 and then renewed in 2020, 2022 and finally in 2024 with a duration, this time, of four years.

Eleven Chinese bishops have been appointed under the agreement, with mixed success.

As the Vatican’s foreign minister, Archbishop Gallagher, told the Jesuit magazine America two weeks ago, “The process is to continue the dialogue, to work on the question of the appointment of bishops, to try to make this agreement work as best as possible.”