From May to November 2020, several Catholic institutions were hacked, including ones located in Hong Kong and Italy. Recorded Future, a U.S. cybersecurity firm, attributed the attacks to RedDelta, a state-affiliated Chinese hacking group. The Holy See’s Study Mission to China, which is run by representatives of the Vatican, is based in Hong Kong-based. Beijing and the Vatican cut diplomatic ties in 1951. For the next 67 years, Chinese Catholics were divided into those who followed a state-recognized church and those who followed an underground Vatican-recognized church. In 2018, the Vatican and Beijing came to a temporary agreement, set to expire in September 2020. The details of the agreement are murky, but its goal was to unify the two Catholic churches by negotiating for control over the election of bishops in China. Reportedly, Beijing would select bishops and the Vatican would approve them. Critics urged the Vatican not to accept this deal, which gave Beijing control over Catholic citizens. It is unclear whether the hackers were attempting to obtain information to use in the negotiation or were monitoring the groups to determine their involvement in the pro-democracy unrest in Hong Kong. The attacks have intensified since the official extension of the agreement in October, with fake emails impersonating journalists from the Union of Catholic Asia News and a new kind of malware deployed by the Chinese state-linked hackers.