“A decade into Xi Jinping’s Sinicization campaign and nearly eight years since the 2018 Holy See-China agreement, Catholics in China face escalating repression that violates their religious freedoms,” Human Rights Watch researcher Yalkun Uluyol said in the report.
“Pope Leo XIV should urgently review the agreement and press Beijing to end the persecution and intimidation of underground churches, clergy, and worshipers.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s office told The Associated Press that Human Rights Watch “fabricates all manner of lies and rumors and lacks any credibility whatsoever.”
The office added that the government “oversees religious affairs in accordance with the law and protects citizens’ freedom of religious belief and normal religious activities.”
Human Rights Watch said its researchers are not allowed into China and that the report is based on interviews with people outside the country who had firsthand knowledge of Catholic life in China, along with experts on Catholicism and religious freedom.
The 2018 agreement stipulates that Beijing proposes candidates for bishop, which the pope can veto, though the full text has never been made public.
In June 2025, Pope Leo XIV, who had just become the pope, appointed a Chinese bishop under the 2018 agreement and said he would continue to honor the deal “in the short term.”