The Vatican-China deal has caused two top prelates to but heads over the legitimacy of the Vatican’s 2018 agreement with China on the appointment of bishops.
One expert on Chinese affairs has stepped in insisting that the deal was not only good, but a product of more than 30 years of Vatican diplomacy.
Paolo Affatato, head of the Asia desk for Fides News, told Crux that Pope Francis’s agreement with China on the appointment of bishops “is a fruit of 30 years of work, it wasn’t born yesterday.”
“It was born under John Paul II, who was the first to begin the process of closeness and communion of the bishops in China who were considered illicit,” he said, calling the agreement a “point of arrival” for not only Francis, but also St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Read more