Human Rights Watch Reports Increased Pressure on Underground Catholics in China to Join State-Approved Church

NEW YORK – Chinese authorities are intensifying efforts to pressure underground Catholic communities into aligning with the state-sanctioned church, while also increasing surveillance and imposing travel restrictions on China’s estimated 12 million Catholics, according to a report released by a human rights organization on Wednesday.

The comprehensive report from Human Rights Watch highlights that this intensified pressure is part of a long-standing campaign aimed at ensuring religious groups and independent churches pledge allegiance to the officially atheist Communist Party.

China’s Catholic community has historically been split between a state-endorsed church, which does not acknowledge papal authority, and an underground church that has remained loyal to the Vatican despite enduring years of persecution.

In 2018, Pope Francis attempted to reduce tensions between the Vatican and China by reaching an agreement that allowed the state-controlled church to have a role in appointing bishops—a responsibility traditionally held by the pope alone.

Nonetheless, Yalkun Uluyol, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch, stated that “Catholics in China face escalating repression that infringes upon their religious freedoms.” He urged Pope Leo XIV to re-evaluate the agreement and to advocate for an end to the persecution and intimidation faced by underground churches, clergy, and worshippers.

The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, didn’t immediately respond Wednesday when asked to comment on the report.

China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a query by The Associated Press.

Human Rights Watch said its researchers are not allowed into China. It said its report is based on input from people outside China “who had firsthand knowledge of Catholic life in China,” as well as experts on religious freedom and Catholicism in China.

Under the 2018 agreement, Beijing proposes candidates for bishop that the pope can then veto, though the agreement’s full text has never been made public.

Last June, a month after becoming pope, Leo made his first appointment of a Chinese bishop under the agreement. And in a subsequent interview, Leo specified that he would continue with 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 said. “ 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, according to Human Rights Watch, Chinese authorities have pressured 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 described some of those actions, attributed to people who had left China and who were not named in the report.

The government has also intensified ideological control, surveillance, restrictions on religious activities, and foreign ties in official churches, according to Human Rights Watch. It said that regulations adopted in December subject foreign travel by Catholic clergy to state approval.

The Chinese government officially recognizes five religions — Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam — and tightly supervises them.

In 2016, President Xi Jinping said he would “Sinicize” the country’s religions — increasing oversight and ideological control in a bid to align religious practice with the Communist Party’s ideology and leadership.

Since then, Human Rights Watch asserted, the authorities have demolished hundreds of church buildings or the crosses atop them, prevented adherents from gathering in unofficial churches, restricted access to the Bible, and confiscated religious materials not authorized by the government.

The Sinicization campaign has also meant severe repression of Tibetan Buddhism and Islam , Human Rights Watch said.

In October, a pastor of a prominent underground Christian church was detained, according to his daughter, a church pastor and a group that monitors religion in China.

They said Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri of the Zion Church was detained at his home in Guangxi province, along with dozens of other church leaders across China.

Zion Church is among the largest so-called underground or house churches that are unregistered with the Chinese authorities. They defy government restrictions requiring believers to worship only in registered congregations.

Last month, ChinaAid — a U.S.-based group advocating for religious freedom in China — urged U.S. President Donald Trump to demand Mingri’s release ahead of his planned meeting with Xi in May.

“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.”

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AP Vatican correspondent Nicole Winfield in Yaounde, Cameroon, contributed to this report.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.