The Vatican should immediately drop its deal with China following renewed revelations of forced organ harvesting, rape and torture by the communist regime, according to a letter signed by clergy, human rights campaigners and other leading Catholics. The letter in this week’s Catholic Herald cites a report by the China Tribunal chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, a former prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. The Tribunal found that the Chinese government is conducting a state-run programme of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience and detailed acts of torture. According to the letter, these include: “Killing prisoners by the removal of organs, lethal injection and ‘organ harvesting under the pretext of brain death’; Widespread accounts of rape and torture, including harrowingly graphic stories of sexual violence and prisoners being ‘shocked’ with electric rods, with one woman ‘shocked until [she went] blind’; The use of the so-called ‘tiger chair’, a torture device, on Uighur prisoners.” The letter says Vatican officials have “shamed their office” by backing the Holy See-China deal in face of the mounting evidence of atrocities. In particular, it names Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, the head of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, who asserted that the Chinese government had “accomplished the reform of the organ donation system” and even claimed that “those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese.” The letter’s authors also note that the text of the 2018 deal has been kept so secret that not even Cardinal Zen has seen a copy. “That in itself is a scandal,” they write. The authors include human rights campaigner Benedict Rogers, founder and chairman of Hong Kong Watch, Professor Philip Booth of St Mary’s University, Twickenham, and Dr Joseph Shaw, chairman of the Latin Mass Society. Late last month, Texas-based NGO ChinaAid reported that the country’s campaign to develop “religion with Chinese characteristics” has increased persecution of Christians. “Throughout the year, ChinaAid observed escalated instances of religious oppression, driven by the government’s campaign to develop ‘religion with Chinese characteristics’,” the group said in a 53-page report. Officials in some provinces have ordered the removal of all Christian symbols from buildings and banned under-18s from entering churches. Some have even condemned teaching children to sing hymns as “illegal”. Government agencies have also banned the sale of unauthorised Bibles and other religious books. Cardinal Zen has condemned the Vatican-China deal multiple times, describing it as a “shameless surrender”.