The Vatican, however, has resisted cutting ties to Taiwan and wants China to give assurances on granting religious freedom to China’s Catholics.

An estimated 12 million Roman Catholics in China have been divided for decades between a state-supervised church that has appointed bishops without papal approval and an "underground" wing that resists government ties.

Believers on both sides of the divided church honor the pope as a spiritual leader, and Pope Benedict XVI tried to encourage reconciliation between them and explored establishing formal relations with Beijing. But those efforts foundered over disputes about the appointment of bishops, Chinese restrictions on religion, arrests of believers and the Vatican’s ties to Taiwan.