Vatican correspondent Matteo Matzuzzi published on October 24 in Il Foglio a report from Taiwan, titled “Journey to Taiwan, the island where God is still a stranger,” in which he describes a small Catholic community that can nevertheless practice its faith without restrictions. The author attended Sunday Mass at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Guting district of Taipei and spoke with religious, academics, and political leaders on the island.
The figures cited in the text vary according to the source. One interviewee mentions around 300,000 Catholics, while a 2023 census on Sunday Mass attendance puts the number at about 50,000 faithful. The Church has seven dioceses, four universities, 46 secondary schools, and more than 200 kindergartens. Sister Beatrice Leung notes that at last Easter some 200 people were baptized across the country, compared with the 2,000 or 3,000 recorded in the diocese of Hong Kong alone.
The interviewees point to several internal challenges. Father Mirco Cichella explains that Taoism and Buddhism are deeply rooted and that some Catholics still perform the “Bai Bai” offerings to ask for prosperity. Piotr Adamek, a professor at Fu Jen University, argues that evangelical megachurches already account for nearly half of all believers and that the Catholic Church has been stagnant since its growth period between 1950 and 1980. Jesuit John Rao adds that almost half of the clergy is foreign—mainly Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Filipino—and that Catholicism is often perceived as foreign to Chinese tradition. This is compounded by a birth rate of around 0.7 children per woman and a population in which more than 20 % are over 65.
The contrast with the mainland is drawn by Wen-Jia Luo of the Foundation for Cross-Strait Exchanges, who recalls that some 300,000 people have left Hong Kong in seven years and that its media and courts have lost the freedoms they once enjoyed. Luo also cites Tibet, from which the Dalai Lama fled after 1950, and the detention camps for Uyghurs in Xinjiang. “There is no real freedom in China,” he states, and maintains that religious freedom on the mainland is controlled by the state. Adamek, for his part, notes that Chinese Catholicism is shaped by state policies such as “sinicization” and that the Church there maintains far less contact with the outside world than in Taiwan.
The report also devotes space to diplomacy with the Holy See. Taiwan’s embassy to the Vatican is the only one the island maintains in Europe, and its head, Anthony C. Y. Ho, is promoting the “H.O.P.E.” initiative. Foreign Minister Lin Chia-Lung stresses that relations with the Holy See have lasted more than 80 years and continue to advance. Matzuzzi describes the agreement between the Vatican and China as unbalanced, since Beijing in practice selects the bishops and Rome confirms them.
Regarding this situation, InfoVaticana has reported that China is forcing priests to hand over their passports and how Eucharistic adoration is growing in Taiwan amid Beijing’s military pressure on the island.