PRAGUE (LifeSiteNews) — A Czech cardinal who was once imprisoned by communists publicly criticized the Vatican under Pope Francis for ignoring Communist China’s human rights abuses and persecution of Catholics.

“Just as silence and complicity with the communist regime damaged my country and made it easier for the government to imprison dissidents, the Church’s silence in the face of human rights abuses by Communist China harms Catholic life in China,” Cardinal Dominik Duka, O.P, the archbishop emeritus of Prague, said in a recent article.

“Hudson Institute scholar Nina Shea has documented that eight Catholic bishops are now believed to be detained indefinitely without trial in China,” he noted. “We know that the great Cardinal Joseph Zen was arrested in 2022 and is now being watched and monitored by the state.”

READ: Pope refuses to defend Cdl. Zen ahead of trial in Communist China, calls for ‘dialogue’

“Jimmy Lai, a Catholic convert and newspaper owner, has been held in solitary confinement in Hong Kong for more than three years,” the cardinal added. 

“Václav Havel (the famous Czech writer and statesman), with whom I once shared a cell, wrote that the only way to fight totalitarian power is for each of us to have the courage to choose to live the truth in our own lives, no matter what,” he continued. “Today, we are again facing totalitarian dictatorships and ideologies. Once again, courageous individuals are paying the price for standing up to them.”

“Strengthened by such modern witnesses, whether known or unknown, Vatican diplomacy must regain and raise its voice to join them in defending the human person and in defending the Gospel. The time of courage has come once again,” he declared.

Cardinal Duka, ordained a priest in 1970, was banned from ministering as a priest by the communist government of what was then Czechoslovakia, though he continued secretly preaching and teaching seminarians. In 1981, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison for “religious activities.”

The prelate compared the Vatican’s diplomacy with China to the policy of Ostpolitik employed by Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, in which “the struggle for freedom and human dignity had begun to be set aside in favor of the politics of détente, which was mainly supported by the political left and communist states.”

The “quiet diplomacy” of Ostpolitik “was skillfully overcome under Pope St. John Paul II, who strengthened underground and dissident information networks to raise his voice and extend his reach,” Cardinal Duka recalled. “He insisted that the Gospel of Jesus Christ be made public, no matter what.”

The Czech cardinal also criticized “attempts to exclude the Church — and the truths of the human person — far from the public square” across the West, as well as threats against schools and teachers who resist transgenderism and the firing of people for upholding “the good of marriage and the value of all human life.” 

Pope Francis and China

Pope Francis, and the Vatican during his papacy, have faced widespread criticism for their lenient – and even admiring – approach to totalitarian left-wing regimes, particularly China. 

China’s Communist government has oppressed the Catholic Church for decades but has significantly intensified its persecution of Catholics and other religious groups under current dictator Xi Jinping. 

In recent years, Chinese Communists have arrested and tortured Catholics and other Christians, demolished Catholics shrines, and implemented a surveillance system for clergy. Human rights organizations and Chinese Christian leaders have called the wave of persecution the worst attack on religion in the country since the Cultural Revolution.

Since 2014, the Chinese government has also interned more than one million ethnic and religious minorities in China’s Xinjiang province, reportedly killing some prisoners and subjecting thousands of women to forced abortions, systematic sexual abuse, and involuntary sterilization.  

However, despite his normal outspokenness, Pope Francis has rarely mentioned China’s abuses and has downplayed religious oppression in the country, saying that, “In China, the churches are full.”

READ: Vatican silent as Chinese communists arrest Catholic publisher in Hong Kong

Pope Francis has also been heavily criticized for his Vatican-China deal, which experts and human rights organizations, including the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, have said has exacerbated persecution of Chinese Catholics.

The secretive agreement, signed in 2018 and renewed in 2020 and 2022, is understood to allow the Chinese Communist government to select bishops and reportedly recognizes the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), the schismatic, state-backed Catholic “church” in China. As part of the deal, the Vatican recognized seven illegitimate “bishops” installed by the CPA and pushed two bishops of the faithful underground Chinese Church out of their dioceses, replacing them with CPA “bishops.”

Cardinal Zen, the revered former bishop of Hong Kong, has condemned the Vatican-China deal as a “complete surrender” and called for the resignation of Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin over the agreement.

Pope Francis himself has admitted that underground Catholics “will suffer” under the deal. “There is always suffering in an agreement,” he said in 2018.

But the Argentine pope, who has expressed sympathy for communists, has nevertheless described the deal as “going well,” and Parolin has announced that the Vatican and China intend to renew it again this fall.

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