In March, the Vatican will recognise the Communist Party as a spiritual authority with the power to appoint bishops. The idea is controversial, as The Australian has been reporting over the past few weeks. The accord will reverse decades of Vatican resistance to communism. It will give the Chinese state power over church leadership.

For many years, the CCP has been frustrated by Christians including Catholics who refuse to worship the gods of the red state: Marx, Lenin and Mao. Underground churches have developed in Christians’ homes where they defend the vital separation of church and state by resisting the communist bible and its politically correct, false Christ. Many believe these Christians, loyal to Christ’s teaching, are being led like lambs to the slaughter by the Vatican’s deal with the communist state.

Pew Research estimates that by 2030, China’s Christian population of 70 million would grow to between 250 million and 300 million. If the forecasts prove accurate, China will soon overtake the US as the most populous Christian country.

The CCP response to the Christian renaissance is to crack down on the Christians over which it has no control, the House Church Movement, even to demolishing buildings and removing crosses from buildings. The party is rattled. It is desperate to revive belief in the dead faith of communism by cracking down on spiritual rivals.

President Xi Jinping has instructed CCP cadres to be “unyielding Marxist atheists”. The Global Times reported Wang Zuoan, director of the state administration for religious affairs, warning CCP cadres to be “firm Marxist atheists, obey party rules and stick to the party’s faith”.

If Pope Francis recognises the tyrannical regime as legitimate, it will surrender Catholic spiritual authority to communism. It will be a realisation of Hegel’s totalitarian dictum: “the state is God on earth”. By contrast, Christ’s teaching provides for the limited state, which is a bulwark against totalitarianism. On the separation of church and state, Christ said: “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s: and to God, the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21).

The most publicised opposition to the coming Vatican-communist accord was issued by Chinese cardinal Joseph Zen. He warned the pact was a blessing for a communist-ruled church. Its true effect will be to validate a corrupt system of state-governed religion and empower the persecution of Christians in underground churches who reject it. He believes the Vatican is selling out the Catholic Church in China.

Pope Francis, long rumoured to be a darling of the socialist cause, is closely associated with men schooled in liberation theology. In general terms, liberation theology combines revolutionary socialism with selected Christian teachings on poverty. South American priests led the ideological charge by joining Marxist revolutionary movements and appropriating Christ for the cause.

Concerns about growing Marxist influence on Vatican thought mounted earlier this month after Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, head of the Pontifical Academy of Social Science, said China was the best example of a Catholic society. Sorondo said the communist state had a “positive national conscience” and praised it for “best implementing the social doctrine of the church”.