00:01For years, China's been tearing down unauthorized Catholic churches,
00:05an example of increasing state controls on religious practice.
00:09Beijing requires churches to pledge loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.
00:14Despite that, there are still many Catholics who maintain allegiance to the Pope.
00:19Underground communities in China have existed for a long time.
00:24Now, a new report by Human Rights Watch says Beijing's crackdown on underground Catholic communities has gotten worse since 2018.
00:32That's when the Vatican signed an agreement allowing the Chinese government to nominate bishops,
00:37leaving underground churches unable to continue under bishops who were approved by the Vatican
00:42and putting pressure on members of those communities to join the state-sanctioned church.
00:46Many of the bishops have been subjected to persecution.
00:50They've been arbitrarily arrested in prison. Some of them still remain missing.
00:55But a researcher who studies the Vatican's connections with the Chinese-speaking world
00:59says that the situation inside China isn't so clear-cut.
01:03I think now it's quite tricky, like I mentioned before,
01:07because China, on the one hand, they put more restriction by law on Catholic church,
01:13but on the other hand, they also encourage their priesthood, their nuns, to study abroad
01:18or their believers to study abroad to gain better theological teaching.
01:25For members of underground Catholic churches, moving to Taiwan may seem like an attractive option.
01:30Taipei has official ties with the Vatican,
01:32and it's also home to the only Mandarin-speaking theological faculty run directly by the Holy See.
01:39But the mere fact of being a Chinese citizen is always going to bring extra scrutiny from the government here.
01:44Because of our national security concern, frankly speaking, I think we are not that welcome to everybody that has to
01:54be in exile,
01:56not only for Catholics, like for Tibetan Buddhists.
01:59So that's the reason why it seems like that Taiwan, although Taiwan is a religious freedom country,
02:06but we are not like a heaven for those religious believers who suffer from an authoritarian regime.
02:18An estimated 300,000 Catholics call Taiwan home.
02:23And whether the country can truly open its doors to those in exile still remains in question.
02:29Instead, Taiwan may not be the final safe haven for Chinese believers,
02:33but instead a bridge connecting them to the Holy See and a wider international Catholic network.
02:40Alex Chen, Irene Lin, and Tiffany Wong for Taiwan Plus.
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