News
Featured Image
Theodore McCarrick/Photo by Patrick HoPatrick Ho

WASHINGTON D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – A newly released report has highlighted ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s relationship with communist China as he worked closely with one of China’s largest private energy companies to promote Vatican relations with China.

Hunter Biden worked as a “managing director” of the Chinese company.

In an August 11 report, online newspaper The National Pulse (TNP) reported a link between disgraced ex-cardinal McCarrick and CEFC China Energy, a private energy company, which in 2014 was among the top 10 largest private companies in China.

Allegations that CEFC , founded by the now-missing tycoon Ye Jianming, had links to China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have been supported by mainstream media outlets.

TNP reported that McCarrick spoke at a number of CEFC events, “including the New York Forum on World Civilizations in 2012 and Sino-US Colloquium on Core Values and World Order in 2013.”

Pope and Chinese Communist president very similar: McCarrick

Demonstrating the reputation McCarrick enjoyed with the CEFC, his speech at the 2013 meeting was reproduced in full in the CEFC’s “China Eye” journal. The speech, entitled “How to get to know other people?”, began with the words: “It is a special pleasure to be back with the China Energy Fund.”

McCarrick called for a “very special” relationship between Christianity and “the huge, extraordinary population of China,” before comparing the relationship between Communist China and its president to that between the Catholic Church and the Pope.

“The doctrines of Catholics and the Communist doctrine” both depend on “some basic principles,” stated McCarrick, adding that “they are not necessarily the same principles.”

The required loyalty to those principles was the reason for desiring a further unity between the Church and Communist China, the then-cardinal declared.

Comparing the Pope to the Chinese president, McCarrick said that both men have as “their job…to discern how these doctrines are applicable today.”

“We are doing that now with the new pope, and you were doing it with the new president, and I see interesting connections,” he added.

McCarrick’s comments, aligning Pope Francis with President Xi Jinping – who assumed office within one day of each other in March 2013 – continued to make the case for increased Vatican-China relations, as he outlined the similarities between Francis and Xi:

So they are both people who are willing to talk to the ordinary people, to those who are not in government, and they are also willing to look at society in a new way. The Holy Father continues to talk about reforming the different parts of the Church; President Xi talks very often, as far as I read, in reforming part of the government, reforming the way that power is exercised and the way that it is shared with the different agencies.

And each of them has a new vision, so that not only is our world faced with a large Christianity of more than a billion and a large China of more than a billion, but these great masses of human beings, brothers and sisters all, they share this new vision and, and I have to put it into words, this is where the difficulty comes.

The dialogue begins by people talking to each other, and I think that is where the Catholic Church has to be now, and that is where China has to continue to be now.

The now disgraced and laicized prelate hinted that the CEFC meetings were a stage in the process of  the Vatican uniting with China, saying that “the world needs people to work together, and I think this is what the China Energy Fund is all about, this is what our meetings are about.”

In addition, McCarrick expressed the hope that the CEFC would be the instrument through which President Xi and Pope Francis would one day meet.

McCarrick implicated in Vatican ‘selling out the Catholic Church in China’

McCarrick, laicized in February of 2019 with no possibility for appeal because of his sexual misconduct, was recently charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy in the 1970s and faces trial.

The former cardinal has been described by former Apostolic Nuncio to the USA Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, as “one of the main proponents of the secret agreement with China.”

This deal was the 2018 concordat between the Vatican and China, described by Cardinal Zen, Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong, as “the Vatican …  selling out the Catholic Church in China.” The deal was renewed in the autumn of 2020.

In his explosive 2018 testimony, Viganò said that McCarrick had hinted that he was a bridge between the Vatican and China, recalling how the ex-cardinal had even confided to him in 2013 that he was going to China the next day.

That was not the then-cardinal’s first trip; he was a regular visitor to China. As the Catholic News Agency reported in 2018:

Over 20 years, Archbishop McCarrick traveled to China on at least eight occasions, sometimes staying in a state-controlled Beijing seminary, often serving as an unofficial bridge between the Vatican and Chinese government-appointed bishops until 2016.

Prior to allegations of sexual abuse and harassment becoming public this summer, the former cardinal had been an outspoken proponent of a deal between Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Church under Pope Francis, according to Chinese reports.

‘I see a lot of things happening that would really open many doors because President Xi and his government are concerned about things that Pope Francis is concerned about,’ McCarrick told The Global Times in an exclusive interview in Feb. 2016. The interview quoted McCarrick as saying that the similarities between Pope Francis and Xi Jinping could be ‘a special gift for the world’.

The influential cardinal enjoyed the trust and friendship of Pope Francis, and was once  described as Pope Francis’s “American kingmaker.”

In fact, McCarrick’s own letters reveal that his missions to China were conducted with the knowledge and approval of the Vatican.

“I leave for China on Thursday the 27th…,” he wrote to his former personal secretary, Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo in 2014.

“I am sure that [Secretary of State] Cardinal Parolin would see me since he is involved with my China trip.”

The latest revelations concerning McCarrick’s relationship with China lend credibility to allegations that he is in part responsible for the secretive Vatican-China deal. In an op-ed published recently on LifeSiteNews, Jason Scott Jones wrote: “McCarrick is a master coverup artist. After decades of serial sexual abuse, he had dozens, perhaps hundreds of fellow clerics keeping mum for him. How might such a man go about paving the way for a secret Vatican-China deal over the course of 20 years?”

McCarrick, the Bidens, and China

The National Pulse report also highlights the role which McCarrick may have played in fostering relations between China and the United States of America.

In January 2013 at an CEFC event held at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, McCarrick gave a speech on the “Mystery of Dialogue.” Referring to China and the USA, the then-cardinal declared that “dialogue and exchange between the two civilizations in the era of globalization will be pivotal to promote communications and understanding, leading to a new harmonious relationship based on mutual respect and appreciation.”

In both of the 2013 speeches referenced in this report, McCarrick singled out for praise the CEFC’s Deputy Chairman and Secretary-General, Dr. Patrick Ho. Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden, described Ho as “the …  spy chief of China” in audio files obtained by The National Pulse last year.

In the 2018 emails found on his now infamous laptop, Hunter Biden claimed that he was the “Managing Director” of CEFC. LifeSiteNews’ analysis of Biden’s laptop and emails suggests that he could have assisted Chinese espionage efforts through his business dealings and other activity linked to his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden.

Additional emails indicated that Hunter Biden could have had business connections even with President Xi. Hunter’s emails and audio recordings also testify to his close connection to “spy chief” Patrick Ho.

Such links between the Biden family and President Xi could have been strengthened by McCarrick himself, his personal correspondence suggests. The much anticipated McCarrick Report released last November contains letters that indicate the  ex-cardinal had close relationships with then Vice-President Joe Biden and President Obama.

These letters, written by McCarrick, attest to the “good” relationship he enjoyed with “the new Vice President of the United States.” McCarrick even offered Apostolic Nuncio Sambi the opportunity to dine with Biden at his residence.

As McCarrick faces court proceedings in a matter of days, the unseen influence he had on the Catholic Church, as well as on American politics, continues to be unearthed alongside his history of sexual misconduct.