Rome (AFP)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday called on Pope Francis in Rome to show "courage" to fight religious persecution, especially in the face of China with which the Vatican is about to renew an appointment deal bishops.

"I call on all religious leaders to find the courage to face the religious persecution of their own communities, and those of yesteryear," said Mike Pompeo during a seminar attended by British Archbishop Paul Gallagher , in charge of Vatican relations with other states.

"Christian leaders must defend their brothers and sisters", he added after a violent charge against Beijing which he accuses of repressing its Catholic and Muslim Uyghur minorities.

"Nowhere other than in China is freedom of worship so attacked", according to Mike Pompeo, who has repeatedly cited the commitment of Pope John Paul II in the 1980s against the Soviet bloc in the name of this that the Polish sovereign pontiff called "the risk of freedom".

"May the Church, and all those who know that we are accountable to God in the end, be so daring in our time," hammered the head of American diplomacy.

Relations between the United States and the Vatican have been strained since the signing in September 2018 of a historic "provisional" agreement between the Holy See and Beijing on the appointment of bishops.

The agreement, wanted by the pope to bring together a Chinese Church split in two (the official and underground Churches), gives him the last word to appoint Chinese bishops and two prelates have been chosen since the agreement.

The intervention of Mr. Pompeo had taken very front to part the Vatican diplomacy ten days before his arrival, via an article in the conservative American religious journal "First Things".

Criticizing his agreement with China, he appealed to the Holy See to condemn religious persecution in China, demanding his "moral witness".

These comments were "freshly received" at the Vatican, released Wednesday Archbishop Gallagher, leaving his reserve on the sidelines of the conference.

The Vatican "foreign minister" judged Mike Pompeo's public statements to be contrary to "the rules of diplomacy" ahead of his visit.

- The shadow of the US presidential election -

Mike Pompeo will not meet Pope Francis in the sensitive context of the US presidential elections, Bishop Gallagher confirmed.

A tête-à-tête has never been on the program, specifies a Vatican source.

On the other hand, he will be received Thursday at the Vatican by his number two, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

On the eve of his arrival on Italian soil, the Honduran cardinal Oscar Maradiaga, close advisor to Pope Francis, had estimated that the Americans "must not interfere in our relations with China", in an Italian daily.

For Massimo Faggioli, Italian historian and theologian teaching at Villanova University in the United States, "there is currently a vote hunt for Catholics in the United States".

"We are witnessing the attempt to transform a certain anti-Pope Francis and anti-Vatican sentiment into votes for Trump," said this expert to AFP.

The Argentine pope is attacked by an ultra-conservative Catholic fringe, especially American, who calls him a "communist".

Some believe that he talks too much about social inequalities, migrants and the excluded, to the detriment of traditional doctrines on family or sexual morality.

Pope Francis has already given the green light to renewing the agreement with China in "experimental" mode for two more years in October, a source close to the matter told AFP.

On Wednesday, Mike Pompeo also met his Italian counterpart Luigi di Maio, as well as the head of government Giuseppe Conte.

On the program: bilateral relations, the Covid-19 crisis or the deployment of 5G technology.

Will China also invite itself into the debates?

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi signed two new trade agreements in Rome at the end of August.

And in March 2019, the Italian and Chinese governments signed a memorandum of understanding to seal Italy's entry into the "New Silk Roads, a pharaonic maritime and land infrastructure project launched by Beijing in 2013.

© 2020 AFP