News

By Michael Haynes, PerMariam, (Substack) - The watchdog agency Human Rights Watch (HRW) has warned that the controversial 2018 deal between China and the Vatican has “helped the Chinese government to pressure underground Catholic communities to join the official church.”... According to a detailed new report issued by HRW, the Chinese state is only increasing its persecution of underground Catholics, and is doing so aided by the framework of the 2018 deal between Beijing and the Holy See regarding the appointment of bishops.

By Brad Miner, The Catholic Thing - When St. John Paul II went to Poland, he made no direct criticisms of the communist government. The closest he came was when he told the crowd in Warsaw’s Victory Square that “at any longitude or latitude of geography, the exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man.” I imagined Edward Gierek turning to Wojciech Jaruzelski and asking, “Are we to believe in Christ now?"... Wedging Jesus into the conflict in Iran or border enforcement in the U.S., while hardly a fool’s errand, risks sinking Roman Catholicism into the very worst version of synodality: as an ongoing, transformational whatsis equal to The Blob. ...