“In dealing with the relationship between church and state, religion and politics, we must return to what the Bible says: ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,’” Shen Bin said.
The conference, titled “100 Years Since the ‘Concilium Sinense’: Between History and the Present,” was held in Chinese and Italian in the Great Hall of the Pontifical Urban University.
The one-day event marked the 100th anniversary of a Church council that took place in Shanghai in 1924 and brought together 105 Catholic missionaries, bishops, and Chinese Catholics to establish a framework for a native Chinese hierarchy.
The Pastoral Commission for China and Agenzia Fides, the information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies, organized the conference, which also featured Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle and voices from mainland China as speakers. Pope Francis sent a video message to the conference in which he noted that Chinese Catholics have endured “times of patience and trial” in the past century.
None of the speakers at the Vatican conference spoke critically of human rights or religious freedom in China.
Professor Zheng Xiaojun, the director of the Institute of World Religions at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, assured conference participants that religious freedom is fully guaranteed in China.
According to the 2024 report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, religious freedom conditions in China deteriorated last year as the government intensified its implementation of its “sinicization” policy, which “requires groups to follow the CCP’s Marxist interpretation of religion, including by altering religious scriptures and doctrines to conform to that interpretation.”
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