Bishop appointments rarely attract much attention, but in China, each one is closely watched and commented on by the global Catholic community, as they are seen as indicators of either warming or cooling relations between Beijing and the Vatican. The recent appointment in the Diocese of Fuzhou, a provincial capital on China's Southeast coast facing Taiwan, was especially significant: it was the first to be approved by the new pope, Leo XIV, who was elected on May 8.

On Wednesday, June 11, the Vatican announced that six days earlier, on June 5, it had appointed an auxiliary bishop in this city of nine million people. At the same time, the official Church, overseen by the Chinese Communist Party, held a ceremony on that Wednesday to formally acknowledge the appointment. These two gestures of mutual goodwill occurred in a context that is often tense. China remains the only country where bishops are jointly appointed by local authorities and the Vatican, under a 2018 agreement intended to ease tensions between the two states and to end the system of two parallel Churches – one "official," the other "underground." Elsewhere in the world, this is an exclusive prerogative of the Holy See.

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