Colombo: China has enforced passport control for years as a key tool of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) governance system, requiring officials and employees in sensitive sectors to obtain permission for overseas travel, disclose itineraries, and report after returning from abroad.
Extending this system to Catholic clergy signals a shift in Beijing’s perception of religious figures, treating them less as spiritual leaders and more as individuals whose movements and interactions require close monitoring, a report said on Thursday.
According to a report in the Sri Lankan newspaper ‘Daily Mirror’, China has recently unveiled extensive new internal rules aimed at tightening state oversight of Catholic clergy, expanding the CCP’s longstanding exit controls to bishops, priests, deacons, and nuns nationwide.
The new regulations, it said, require Catholic clergy to hand over their passports and all other travel documents, permitting foreign travel only after prior authorisation and subject to mandatory reporting upon return.
“The measures, adopted on December 16, mark a notable escalation in Beijing’s management of religious personnel and further blur the line between religious administration and political supervision. The rules were jointly issued by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) and the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China (BCCCC), both state-controlled bodies operating under the oversight of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” the report in Daily Mirror detailed.
It stressed that central to the new regulations is compulsory centralised management of travel documents, under which clergy must surrender ordinary passports, Hong Kong–Macau travel permits, and Taiwan travel permits to church authorities for collective custody.
“Individuals are no longer allowed to retain their own documents. Any overseas or cross-border travel—whether undertaken for church duties, training, conferences, or personal reasons—requires prior approval from supervising authorities. Once permission is granted, the travel documents are temporarily released for visa applications,” the report mentioned.
“Upon returning to China, clergy must surrender the documents again within seven days and submit written reports confirming their return and detailing their activities while abroad,” it further stated.
The rules stipulate that unauthorised itinerary alterations, extended stays, or failure to surrender documents will be treated as violations subject to disciplinary action.
“This system closely mirrors the CCP’s long-established exit controls imposed on government officials, party cadres, and executives of state-owned enterprises, whose passports are routinely confiscated to prevent defections, limit foreign contact, and ensure political compliance. By extending this framework to Catholic clergy, the authorities appear to be categorising religious personnel as politically sensitive actors rather than purely spiritual figures,” the report noted.
(IANS)
