Between May 14 and 15, in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, the first bilateral summit took place between the leaders of what are often considered the two current superpowers, Donald Trump’s United States of America and Xi Jinping’s China. The event evoked the summits of the Cold War, when the opposing pole to the West was embodied by the Soviet Union, but today, although there are some parallels, many circumstances are drastically different.
Among these distinguishing elements, worthy of note are the consequences that the summit—and perhaps future ones—may have for the Vatican: not only in its relationship with the two powers but, above all, in the public perception of the idea that the Holy See cultivates regarding respect for human rights.
As is well known, the Vatican maintains complex relations with both poles of international power. On the one hand, the tension with Donald Trump—fueled by his personal attacks on the pontiff on Truth Social and by disagreements over the necessity of military intervention against Iran—fits into a deeper fracture, which dates back at least to the era of Pope Francis and concerns the entire American cultural and geopolitical model, founded on the free market and the primacy of the individual.
On the other hand, the ambiguity of the relationship with post-Maoist China persists, emblematic in the controversial secret agreements on episcopal appointments: an ‘open secret’ that grants the Communist Party the power to designate bishops, leaving the Vatican with a purely formal right of veto. europeanconservative.com provided an in-depth reconstruction of the phases and context that led to the stipulation of the Sino-Vatican agreements.
The Chinese church is bleeding
The Vatican’s position, which seeks to stand between these two extremes, is very uncomfortable and compromising. If, in words, the pope claims the Church’s right to criticize and condemn the political actions of any powerful figure of the moment, in practice, when it comes to defending oppressed Catholics in China, this voice grows faint until it disappears into an embarrassing silence. By Leo XIV’s own admission, he cannot comment on the humanitarian situation of Chinese Catholics.
In light of all this, it is astonishing to observe that, on the occasion of the summit, Trump found the time to do what the pope and, more generally, Vatican diplomacy do not have the courage to do in the name of the multilateralism and diplomatic stability so beloved in the Vatican.
The issue of human rights was touched upon by the U.S. President only in a limited and indirect way. Trump had in fact referred to the numerous political prisoners of the Chinese regime by calling them “innocent people.” Before the meeting with Xi Jinping, Trump had also explicitly referred to the emblematic case of Jimmy Lai—the Catholic publisher sentenced in February 2026. According to Reuters, Trump described Lai as “a tough one,” implying that his release would be very difficult.
Although the White House insisted more on commercial and geostrategic issues than on human rights in its meeting with Beijing, the Lai case functioned as a political signal. Trump in fact used his name as a humanitarian and diplomatic lever, alongside other cases of prisoners or dissidents mentioned in discussions preceding the summit.
The meeting between the two superpowers, moreover, took place one month after the publication by Human Rights Watch of a report denouncing an unprecedented escalation in the repression of Catholics in China. According to HRW, the Chinese government has intensified surveillance, ideological controls, administrative restrictions, and pressure aimed at forcing underground Catholics to join the state Patriotic Church. The measures include arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture, and prolonged house arrests for ‘non-aligned’ priests and bishops.
What appears particularly serious, however, is the fact that the secret Sino-Vatican agreement has strengthened, rather than restrained, the Chinese regime’s capacity to exert pressure and violence against Catholics. HRW confirmed what was already unofficially known about the nature of the agreements, while specifying that neither Francis nor Leo had ever used the veto right provided for, not even after several violations of the agreement by the Chinese government.
The testimonies collected are numerous and speak of demolished churches, removed crosses, threatened faithful. What makes this situation unsustainable is not only the physical violence exercised against Chinese Catholics, but also the moral humiliation and the sense of abandonment and betrayal that these persecuted sons of the Church cannot but perceive from the Holy See.
The Chinese Catholics who resist the sinicization of the Gospel explicitly accuse the Vatican, according to the HRW report, of favoring forced fusion with the Patriotic Church. There are recorded cases in which the communist authorities themselves allegedly ordered priests to register with the regime’s official Church by saying, “The Vatican orders you to join the Patriotic Association.”
The new dogma of multilateralism
The Vatican’s difficulty in changing its approach toward China is, in large part, due to ideological reasons. During the Cold War, the Vatican pursued—especially with the rise of John Paul II—a ‘dual policy’ toward the Soviet regime, two diplomatic strategies profoundly different in logic, aims, and means.
The Polish pope, who had personally experienced Nazi persecution first and Soviet persecution afterward, embraced the line of Realpolitik, a policy founded on reality rather than on disembodied ideological principles. Realpolitik meant recognizing the existence of blocs, acting pragmatically to protect one’s sphere of influence, and exerting pressure on the adversary through instruments of cultural soft power, even while dialoguing with hostile regimes.
John Paul II believed that the Soviet bloc would inevitably collapse before an aspect of reality that other diplomatic actors were accustomed to forgetting, namely, the spiritual dimension of human nature. Marxism was, in his view, destined to yield from within because it was founded on a false assumption, inexorably disproved by human nature. John Paul II did not aim to manage communism but to overcome it.
Simultaneously, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli’s Secretariat of State pursued a different policy, called Ostpolitik. By maintaining constant dialogue with the Soviet regime, Casaroli believed he could obtain gradual margins of freedom for local churches through compromises, bilateral agreements, and slow negotiations—the ‘policy of small steps.’
In this way, communism was seen as a necessary interlocutor, even someone from whom one might learn in order to progress in the life of the Church. In this way, an attempt was made to ‘manage’ the opposing system without claiming to defeat it. History, obviously, proved Pope John Paul II right.
Nevertheless, Casaroli’s line became predominant in the Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI tried to adapt John Paul II’s Realpolitik to the Chinese situation and to transfer this strategy also into the secretariat of state, unsuccessfully. Francis and Leo XIV have followed the opposite path: they have, in fact, brought Casaroli’s and (today) Parolin’s Ostpolitik onto the throne of Peter. Leo XIV, in reality, has done something more than simply embrace multilateralism. He has in fact almost ‘dogmatized’ it in his new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas.
Multilateralism is the adaptation of Ostpolitik to a post-Cold War historical context, where the blocs are no longer only two but multiple and also include international and supranational organizations such as the UN and the EU.
In his first encyclical, Pope Leo XIV writes that the numerous wars of today are caused also by “the crisis of the multilateral system.” The pope goes so far as to admit explicitly that, “in contrast to the two-sided dynamic of the Cold War, the proliferation of operatives and battlefields makes this mentality [of political realism and deterrence, Editor’s note] increasingly fragile.”
“At the core of these issues is a false realism, based not only on the prevailing mentality of force, but on the cultural and anthropological belief that war is an inevitable part of human nature,” the pope continues.
For this reason, multilateralism would be the only viable path, the obligatory path. “International organizations, particularly the United Nations, are essential instruments for promoting a civilization of love, for they can foster dialogue among nations and promote the peaceful resolution of conflicts, the integral development of peoples, the protection of the most vulnerable, disarmament and the care of creation,” the pontiff specifies.
If the Church is reduced to a multilateral actor and a mere guarantor of international coexistence, what remains of its prophetic voice concerning the nature of man and his eternal destiny? The Holy See seeks to mediate at the cost of truth, but the only effect it obtains is to favor the narrative and abuses of those who actively oppose that very truth. If Trump speaks where the pope remains silent, this is not merely a problem of communication. It’s a problem of identity.
