By Rodney Pelletier, Church Militant - In 2015 (Pope Francis) asked China's Catholics to be "spiritually united to the rock of Peter, upon whom the Church is built."... But on September 22, 2018, the Vatican reached a secret agreement with the Communists and days later Pope Francis asked Chinese faithful to "place your trust ever more firmly in the Lord of history and in the Church's discernment of his will."... The deal legitimized bishops in league with the schismatic Chinese Patriotic Association, a parallel church set up by the Communists beholden to the atheist government.