ROME – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday suggested the Vatican join the United States in denouncing violations of devout freedom in China, saying the Catholic Church deserves to be at the forefront of the fight to emphasize the basic human rights.
Pompeo made the call at a convention on freedom organized through the U. S. Embassy to the Holy See, with senior Vatican officials in the audience. This came as the Vatican entered into delicate negotiations with Beijing over the extension of its questionable agreement on the appointment of Chinese bishops.
Pompeo harshly criticized the agreement, writing an essay this month in which he suggested that the Vatican had compromised his authority by signing it. His article greatly infuriated the Vatican, which saw it as interference in the internal affairs of the Church to mark issues of internal politics. .
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said the Holy See was “surprised” by Pompeo’s article. Speaking to reporters outside the conference, Parolin said Pompeo’s personal meetings at the Vatican would have been the most appropriate scenario to express his concerns, Italian news firm ANSA reported.
Neither Parolin nor Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s foreign minister, spoke about China in their official statements at the conference, which was held in the reception room of a hotel near the U. S. embassy. as a basic human right.
“The factor of protective freedom to allow the local Catholic Church to carry out its project remains an indispensable component of the Holy See’s scope and activity,” Gallagher said, criticizing “ideological” threats to freedom, such as the law in some Western nations. redefining classic gender concepts.
In his comments, Pompeo echoed the Trump administration’s harsh complaint about Beijing, which increased after the detection of the coronavirus in China and in the run-up to the US presidential election on November 3.
“Nowhere is freedom attacked more than in China,” Pompeo said, accusing the ruling Communist Party of running “day and night to put out the lamp of freedom, especially freedom, on a terrible scale. “
Pompeo, quoting St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis retired, suggested that leaders commit themselves more to protecting all believers.
“Being a church” permanently on a mission “has many meanings. One of them is actually to be a church permanently for the defense of basic human rights,” he said, referring to a word Francis uses.
In his essay published in the conservative magazine “First Things,” Pompeo said the Agreement between the Vatican and China did not feature Catholics from the devout Chinese repression and warned that the Vatican had compromised its ethical authority by signing it.
“We need each and every establishment to use its power. I think the churches, and the included Catholic Church, have enormous capacity,” Pompeo said Wednesday as he protected the rehearsal. “They have supported the oppressed peoples of the world. “
The Vatican defended its agreement with China, saying that it was a purely ecclesial factor in the appointment of bishops and not a political or diplomatic agreement. The Vatican said that the agreement had produced “limited” but positive effects and value that extended over some other specific period.
Critics, added the retired archbishop of Hong Kong, said the Vatican had sold China’s illegal Catholics, who for decades remained unshakeable, to Rome, at a higher non-public cost. More sympathetic Chinese observers say at most that the agreement has avoided an irrevocable schism in China by creating a mechanism through which bishops can be appointed through a dialogue procedure.
When asked Wednesday how the Holy See won pompeo’s test, Gallagher told reporters, “He won critically. “
He also stated that the proximity of Pompeo’s scale to U. S. elections “is one of the reasons why the Holy Father does not obtain the Secretariat of State. “
Pompeo, who met with the Pope last year when he spoke at a conference, will meet Gallagher and Parolin at the Vatican.
After the conference, Pompeo met with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, the first leader of the Group of Seven to signal the Infrastructure Initiative of the Strip and the China Route. Conte said at the time of Italy’s signaling in 2019, that it had been made despite the objections of the United States, that this would not challenge Italy’s transatlantic associations.
An adjunct spokesman for the state branch, Cale Brown, said Pompeo raised the factor in his assembly with Conte and noted the “risks” of doing business with China.
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