In his Christmas blessing on Friday, Pope Francis again snubbed the Uyghur Muslims in China, calling attention to suffering and injustice around the world but omitting any mention of those suffering under that Communist regime.
The social justice pope referred to the people of Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, the Yazidis, Israelis and Palestinians, the Lebanese people, Ukraine, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, Ethiopia, Mozambique, South Sudan, Nigeria, and Cameroon, Chile and Venezuela, the Philippines and Vietnam. He added, “I cannot forget the Rohingya people: may Jesus, who was born poor among the poor, bring them hope amid their sufferings.”
Meanwhile, more than a million Uyghurs are being held in concentration camps in northwest China, where there have been reports of genetic testing, organ harvesting, torture, and forced abortions taking place.
The Vatican signed a secret accord with the CCP in September 2018 regarding the naming of Chinese bishops, a move that drew an avalanche of criticism. The accord was renewed this fall despite appeals from governments and human rights groups that begged the Vatican to reconsider its appeasement policy toward the Chinese.
Writer Benedict Rogers complained that the Pope’s “silence speaks to the dangers of the deal made with China by the Vatican — and demands that others in the church speak out.
“It is Francis’s silence that shocks me most,” Rogers added. “Almost every Sunday, as he prays the Angelus, he rightly references some injustice somewhere in the world. He has spoken often in the past not only of the persecution of Christians around the world but of the plight of the Rohingyas in Myanmar; the conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, and Nigeria; and religious freedom for all.”