Retired Catholic bishop and Cardinal Joseph Zen and five co-defendants pleaded not guilty at the West Kowloon Magistrates Court to failing to properly register their 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, which offered financial, legal and psychological help to people arrested during the 2019 protest movement.

The West Kowloon Magistrate's Court adjourned the trial after defence attorneys for Zen and his co-defendants, former pro-democracy lawmaker and barrister Margaret Ng, scholar Hui Po-keung, jailed former lawmaker Cyd Ho, Cantopop star Denise Ho and former fund secretary Sze Shing-wee tried to counter police witnesses called by the prosecution.

The prosecution was allowed to fully make its case that the defendants should have registered the fund within one month of starting the operation, but when the defence came to cross-examine them, their questions were overruled as irrelevant.

The trial was adjourned before the defence could call witnesses or make its case after judge Ada Yim ruled that their testimony was already well-established. The trial had been scheduled to run for five days.

Zen and the other defendants were arrested in May under a draconian national security law for "colluding with foreign forces" but have yet to be indicted on that charge.

Vatican silent

On Monday, the first day of the trial, the prosecution said the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund had raised a total of US$34.4 million and used part of the fund for "political activities and non-charity events" such as donations to protest groups.

The defence argued that the defendants had a right to form an association under the city's mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

The Vatican has remained mostly silent on Zen's trial apart from issuing a statement after the cardinal's arrest in May expressing "concern" and that it was "following the development of the situation with extreme attention," the Catholic News Agency reported.

The cardinal's trial comes as the Holy See and Beijing are determining the terms of the renewal of an agreement on the appointment of bishops in China, it said.

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said in an Italian television interview on 2 September that a delegation of Vatican diplomats has returned from China and that he believes the agreement will be renewed by the end of the year.

Zen has been an outspoken critic of the 2018 deal, calling it "an incredible betrayal".

'Man of God'

Pope Francis said on 15 September that the Vatican has "chosen the path of dialogue" with China.

However Cardinal Fernando Filoni, an expert in Chinese affairs, said in a recent article in the bishops' newspaper Avvenire that Zen "is a man of God; at times intemperate, but submissive to the love of Christ.

"He is an authentic Chinese. No one among those I have known can, I say, be truly as loyal as he is," Filoni wrote.

Zen travelled to Rome last year in a bid to discuss who will be the next Bishop of Hong Kong, but was denied an audience with the Pope and returned home empty-handed, he told the National Catholic Register at the time.

As well as criticising the Vatican's deal with Beijing, Zen has said he fears that appointing a bishop for Hong Kong who is totally obedient to the CCP would effectively collapse any distinction between the Catholic church in mainland China and that in Hong Kong.

He said such a collapse had been made likely by the imposition by Beijing of the national security law on Hong Kong with effect from 1 July 2020, and that the Vatican had "taken leave" of the church's principles in signing the deal.

"Everyone in the Chinese Catholic church is now a yes-man for the Chinese government and the underground church has been eliminated," Zen told RFA in October 2021. He has said he will refuse to be interred alongside CCP-appointed clergy in a Hong Kong cathedral.

• Lee Yuk Yue and Hoi Man Wu.
• Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. Copyright © 1998-2020.
• Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

The city's cardinal emeritus, who has been politically active in protests against any encroaching power by Beijing, used international media to take aim at the Holy See over its lack of support for the territory's democracy protests despite the pope recently speaking out in favour of protesters in Chile and Lebanon.

"But these protesters are not rioters. These are our children, fighting for our democratic rights, who are under attack. And they are being let down by law enforcement, local authorities — and the Vatican," Cardinal Zen, 87, wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post titled "What's behind the Vatican's silence on Hong Kong?"

"How sad it is to see our children beaten, humiliated, arrested and prosecuted. In the face of such injustice, several governments have spoken out despite risks to their economic interests in China. But there has been a corner of resounding silence. In all these months of demonstrations, the Vatican has not uttered a word of criticism toward Beijing".

"This is regrettable — but should not come as a surprise. The line followed by the Vatican in recent years when dealing with the threatening China giant has been appeasement at any cost."

Cardinal Zen has been a trenchant critic of the Vatican's September 2018 deal with Beijing on the appointment of bishops and he believes this has silenced Pope Francis on all things China.

He took particular aim at Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who "is the one who has his hands on the Chinese dossier. He clearly believes that such a position is necessary to open a new way for evangelisation of the immense Chinese nation. I have strong doubts."

Cardinal Zen attended an 800,000-strong street march in central Hong Kong on Dec. 8, International Human Rights Day, that was marred by arson attacks on the city's Court of Appeal and High Court building.

"We hope that everything will be carried out peacefully, we hope that everything can be done peacefully, and small things will be done," he had written on his Facebook site on Dec. 8.

"Don't get excited, don't be nervous and tolerate each other. Pray for God, the virgin gives us wisdom. We are in a city where God is caring and loving. The people around us are brothers and sisters on the left or right."

An overwhelming election victory.

The protest movement marked its six-month anniversary with a show of numbers not seen since the early months.

Two weeks earlier, anti-government parties won an overwhelming victory in council elections, taking the Hong Kong government and Beijing by surprise and underscoring widespread support for the protesters.

Police had given permission for the Dec. 8 march, changing tack from a more aggressive position that had seen protests turn increasingly violent.

"The government looks forward to working with the whole of society to curb violence, defend the rule of law and rebuild social order, and to find a way out of Hong Kong's deep problems through dialogue," a Hong Kong government spokesman said.

"During today's march, violence and illegal acts still occurred, especially the attack and arson against the Court of Final Appeal and the High Court. In a society with the rule of law, everyone must respect courts, judges and their decisions."

Cardinal Zen's critique came only a week after the president of the Communist Party-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, Bishop Fang Xingyao, said that "love for the homeland must be greater than the love for the Church," adding that the "law of the country is above canon law."

Despite silence from the Vatican on Hong Kong, the city's diocese has supported protesters.

Cardinal John Tong Hon, 80, who was brought out of retirement by the pope on the death of Bishop Michael Yeung in January, has supported protesters and many of their demands, while Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Ha Chi-shing has been regularly visible in his support of protesters, including those barricaded by police inside universities in recent months.

Source: www.ucanews.com. Republished with permission.

Zen, who is the former bishop of Hong Kong, says the distinction between the underground Church and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association has not been eradicated.

He says those who attend the "underground" Church worship in secret and are subject to persecution from the government if they are discovered.

Amid a religious crackdown in China, Zen says priests of the underground Church have been encouraging their parishioners to skip Mass for their own safety. Read more

The deal is already drenched in controversy and opposed by many Chinese Catholics and anti-pope conservatives.

But the Vatican hopes it is just the first fruit of a long campaign, begun 25 years ago when the Vatican withdrew its nuncio from Taiwan.

The most recent negotiations were conducted under the supervision of Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, Pope Francis' trusted No. 2 man who negotiated an agreement with the communist rulers of Vietnam back in 1996.

Speculation about the deal reached fever pitch in mid-September when it was leaked to the Wall Street Journal.

The agreement was announced Sept. 22 in a short, detail-free but nuanced announcement.

Indeed, the regularization of bishops' appointments was always the central goal of these talks that have taken five years to bear any fruit, despite too many misguided reports that the Vatican was prepared to go as far as cutting diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

The Vatican is the only state in Europe that continues to recognize Taipei.

The deal is seen as just a first step by Rome to exerting more influence on the Chinese church. As promised, few of its details have been made public.

It is believed the agreement gives the pope final veto power over the nomination of an episcopal candidate sent to Rome, putting in ink what has been effective practice for some years

For its part, the Vatican has officially recognized eight bishops previously not recognized by Rome and/or previously excommunicated.

One of those bishops died in 2017.

This is one of the key points of the deal that has angered leaders of China's so-called underground Catholics, leaders who have refused to join the Communist Party-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association.

Various estimates, including by the U.S. government, say underground Catholics make up as much as 50 percent of the country's estimated 10 million -12 million Catholics.

The same estimates say Protestants outnumber Catholics by about 50 million.

Leaked information of the deal triggered a resistance movement whose case had been publicly and aggressively prosecuted by Hong Kong's politically active retired bishop, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, 86, who was born in Shanghai.

"They're giving the flock into the mouths of the wolves.

It's an incredible betrayal," he told the British news agency Reuters, adding that Parolin should resign.

"I don't think he has faith. He is just a good diplomat in a very secular, mundane meaning." Continue reading

• Image: NCR

In what is both false and misleading, Cardinal Zen keeps repeating the claim that the Vatican's behavior in its relations with Beijing on the appointment of bishops in China is "unprecedented."

It is not and it is false to claim it is as even a casual familiarity with Catholic history will show.

In fact, for 90 percent of the history of the church, processes for the selection and appointment of bishops across the Catholic Church prevailed that are identical with or very close to what is happening in China right now.

Today and for much of the last 200 years, appointments of bishops are handled in a process where a local church sends three names to Rome - to the Congregation for Bishops or to where most bishops were decided on at the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples or Propaganda Fide.

These candidates are assessed and the preferred candidate is then sent to the pope for approval.

In most cases, the "preferred candidate" sent to the pope for approval and appointment is the first name proposed at the local level.

200 years is recent history

But that is - in Catholic terms - a recent development: only 200 years!

At the beginning of the 19^th century no more than 2-5 percent of the bishops of the world were directly appointed from Rome by the pope.

From the beginning of the 19^th century, a process began that has delivered us the current procedure where almost all bishops in the world owe their appointments to the pope.

This change came about following the humiliation of Pope Pius VII by Napoleon who summoned him to Notre Dame in Paris in 1804 to be a witness to his crowning as emperor.

The event as reported had Napoleon take the crown from the pope with Napoleon crowning himself.

This followed Napoleon's high handed and effective rejection of no less than 40 candidates proposed by the Vatican as bishops in France.

After the 1789 French Revolution and "The Terror" led by Robespierre, tens of thousands of French clerics fled the country and with them a vast number of bishops, leaving their Sees vacant.

Church authorities with the Vatican's approval proposed successors.

Napoleon rejected 40 of them and proposed alternatives who were appointed.

This experience led the pope to commence a campaign conducted throughout the 19^th century to recover his authority in episcopal appointments, something that was accomplished as the kingdoms and empires of Europe all were overthrown or, as happened following World War I, just discarded.

But until that point, the appointment of bishops was in the hands of various imperial authorities with the pope just ticking the box created by the various aristocratic houses.

This had huge and lasting impact especially in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Indeed, the process of Cardinal Zen's own appointment owed its origins to this period.

This started to happen with a stroke of the pen in 1493 when the lamentable Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, divided the "New World" between the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal.

With this ruling, Portugal got access to and control of lands to the east of a line in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which meant Africa and all of Asia except the Philippines. Spain got the Philippines and all of Latin America except Brazil.

With these colonial "possessions" granted by the corrupt Alexander VI went also the right - which they already had in their homelands - to appoint bishops in their new colonies.

Colonialism had begun and with it the missionary expansion of the Roman Church but with the kings of Spain and Portugal saying who got to be bishops.

This practice continued until half way through the 20^th century with right being extended to the Anglican United Kingdom in India until its independence of Britain in 1947.

Routinely, the archbishops of Bombay and Karachi would be nominated and approved by the colonial authorities - England and Portugal - only then to approved by the pope.

The last English archbishop of Bombay - Tom Roberts - was Jesuit, plucked from his job as parish priest of the large Jesuit parish in Liverpool, St. Francis Xavier.

Come independence, he resigned; the Vatican wouldn't accept his resignation; he just vacated the See and went home to live with the English Jesuits for the rest of his life.

Applying history to today's China

Back to China and the significance of this history for current challenges.

Throughout its history since the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire in the 4^th Century AD, the papacy has always had to play politics with kingdoms and empires.

Popes fought for the church's interests; kings and princes fought for their own; both parties made concessions and shared control of vital aspects of the church's governance.

Dealing with the government of China is very different because it isn't part of the Catholic world that saw deals done between the pope and Catholic monarchs.

China's political and historical precedent is Imperial China that has always found it difficult, if not impossible, to deal with difference and the world outside the Middle Kingdom.

The Communists are no different.

Why does the Vatican do it?

For one simple reason: to preserve what little space and formal arrangements they can for the survival of the institution of the church which, after all, is their job.

Far from being the cowards and quislings Cardinal Zen would have us believe Cardinal Parolin and the Vatican's Secretariat of State are.

Standing on your dignity and only making demands and no concessions, as Cardinal Zen does, is not only a doomed strategy.

It is also an approach that is completely ignorant of what the church has done in other circumstances throughout history in contexts far less amenable than contemporary or historical China.

Take the Nazis in Germany or the Fascists in Italy in the 1920s or the Eastern Bloc Communists in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Moreover, it takes us back to what happened some 46 years ago when President Richard M Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger did what was unthinkable during the high time of the Cold War: accepted that the Chinese Communists were the established government of China and like it or not, they had to be dealt with as its government.

Many in the church today - Cardinal Zen included - act as if that's not the final word on who runs China.

All my life I have known - in the Jesuits and elsewhere - what in clerical and missionary circles were called "old China hands."

I live in a house in Bangkok that was built in the mid 1950s to accommodate a group of Jesuits expelled from China.

They simply couldn't accept what had happened in history and argued to just wait till Communist China collapses and they can go back to China and resume their work as foreign missionaries.

The "old China hands" expected Chiang Kai-shek to reclaim China and allow the missionaries to resume their work.

Dialing down the emotion

Cardinal Zen not only needs to read a bit more history. He also needs to turn the emotional volume down.

His "cops and robbers" narrative that he shouts at everyone who doesn't agree with him - this writer included - does little more than encourage anyone listening to walk away from him.

Whatever he thinks he's doing for the people he sees himself supporting, he isn't doing them any good with his approach.

The value of what he might contribute is lost in his hysterical outbursts against those he accuses of being evil.

It's some claim to be speaking for half the Catholics in China when he has no actual evidence to support the assertion about people living in a country he hasn't visited in over 20 years.

Moralize all you like, but Cardinal Zen offers no path forward.

• Father Michael Kelly SJ is executive director of ucanews.com. First published in ucanews.com. Reprinted with permission.

It's perched high in the Mid-Levels of Hong Kong Island, high but not quite high enough to see out over the bay and toward China where controversy has been mounting over what Vatican sources — clearly the Holy See's communications office run by American Greg Burke — claim is a fairly imminent deal with Beijing on the appointment of bishops.

Cardinal Zen's trip to Rome weeks earlier to broach the matter with Pope Francis has raised the temperature of the debate and almost certainly triggered the Vatican's anonymous drop to several media outlets.

After crossing himself, saying grace silently and then crossing himself again, the bonhomie is parked for a bit and Cardinal Zen is straight down to business.

Next to his bowl of soup ("I don't eat salad") is a printed copy of the recent comment piece by Father Michael Kelly, UCAN's executive director, titled: The Vatican-Chinese bishops kerfuffle.

But it was the subheading Cardinal Zen was focused on: "What is happening right now is no way unprecedented in recent Catholic history in China."

Cardinal Zen has made annotations in blue biro and, turning his sharp eyes on me as I try and broach the topic du jour, he lays his hand on Father Kelly's article and says: "I read this one and I find I have to put in order some facts."

"Firstly, what is happening is not normal, absolutely is novel — nothing similar has happened before," he says.

"During many years they had their own bishops, there was no communication between the church in China and the Vatican.

"So when the open policy started [under Deng Xiaoping from 1978] communication became easy, so many of the old bishops ordained illegitimately made representations to the Holy See through their friends.

"The Holy See made some investigations and approved some of them, though not all.

"The investigation was whether they were decent people and whether they were under pressure — of course they were under pressure. The investigation was about whether they were good people and many were, so the Holy See was very happy.

"They [the open church] also needed new bishops, so they used elections — actually fake elections — so the government chose people [to be bishops]. Some of these people were courageous enough to ask [the Vatican] for approval, so after some investigation by the Holy See ... they were legitimized.

"In the meantime they [the Vatican] ordained underground bishops and there was a special facility that they could ordain without approval and then seek approval later and have it ratified — this is before and immediately after the Cultural Revolution.

"Many underground bishops were arrested, so they needed to ordain their successor or even two successors. So when the Holy See got around to legitimizing them, there were often two bishops in the underground and the open church.

"In Rome the underground bishop is considered the bishop, while the one in the open church is only the auxiliary. That was the practice for several years under Cardinal Tomko [prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples]. He was from Czechoslovakia, so he knew the communists, hey? So they came to know that many people in the open church were good people, so they legitimized people in the church and they encouraged people like me to go and teach in the seminaries in China. Continue reading

Moral outrage and high emotion are a potent cocktail. Such is what is reverberating around the world right now about the Vatican's moves to replace two bishops in China.

The events have triggered reports and comments in the Catholic media and even in such apparently irreligious publications as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

Before we start interpreting and analyzing and assessing what is going on, we need to get a few things clear and they are the facts:

1. In the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church (i.e. Roman Catholicism) and whether you like it or not, bishops are appointed by and remain in place at the behest and with approval of the pope; and
2. In China, and for several decades, bishops have been elected locally and without Vatican nomination or approval only later to be recognized and confirmed by the Vatican in their positions in various dioceses across China.

Retired bishop of Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun seems to claim that doing what the Vatican has done is a cowardly cowering before the communist government of the Peoples Republic of China, the abandonment of faithful Catholics and rewarding renegades and people excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

Not unprecedented

By changing bishops in two dioceses, what the Vatican is doing with the appointment of two previously excommunicated bishops is not novel.

It has happened this way in China since the 1980s.

As the Catholic Church recovered from all that the communist victory in 1949 and later the Cultural Revolution from 1966 inflicted on it, the rebuilding of the church in the 1980s was a haphazard affair.

Bishops were elected locally throughout the country in the open churches operating with government approval.

In countless instances, these were not episcopal candidates approved by Rome. But later and across the country and across the decades, private agreements between these bishops and Rome were reached.

But as bishops appointed irregularly and often ordained by other bishops who were similarly appointed without Vatican approval, they were formally speaking automatically excommunicated for these procedures.

But no great issue was made of this and the miscreant bishops and the Vatican reached compromise solutions to recognize appointments and just get on with redeveloping dioceses and the church's life.

In parallel from the 1980s and until very recently, the Vatican followed a procedure where it appointed "underground bishops," so suspicious was it of anyone — ordinary Catholic, cleric, religious or bishop — who cooperated with the openly recognized and registered Catholic communities.

This created a circumstance that has now come back to bite the Vatican and is vividly instance in the present kerfuffle.

What is happening right now is no way unprecedented in recent Catholic history in China.

The sharp edge today, as emphasized by Cardinal Zen, is that these latterly recognized bishops are being installed in dioceses where there is an already existing "underground bishop" — someone nominated, appointed and ordained with Rome's specific authorization.

The movement of bishops into and out of dioceses — either through mandatory retirement at 75 or to meet needs in another diocese — is an administrative commonplace throughout the Catholic Church.

Vatican sometimes gets it wrong

And yes, sometimes the Vatican gets those moves profoundly wrong.

I was very close to one brutal and unjust instance when an Australian bishop was removed in 2011 from the country diocese of Toowoomba in Australia when Bishop Bill Morris was forced to relinquish his diocese at the explicit urging of three cardinals.

Those cardinals operated in complete violation of the bishop's natural rights or any appreciation of the requirements of due process.

Moreover, they shifted ground on why he should be removed just to make sure he was removed. It was a disgraceful episode.

So, yes, the process can be abused by the Vatican.

But there is no doubt that the placement and removal of bishops is a power that rests with the pope who exercises that power.

Going deeper

But the issues in China go deeper than a consideration of the legitimacy of papal actions.

The allegation is that these changes put the church in the hands of the Chinese government whose agents are those to be newly appointed. And they are "excommunicants" and not worthy of the positions entrusted to them.

This assertion by Cardinal Zen and others has an almost identical precedent in the life of the church 1,600 years ago.

The church was all but divided it in North Africa in the time of St. Augustine of Hippo (AD 354 - 430), the theological genius of late antiquity. The issue was the "Donatist Controversy."

In the last full flourish of the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire and before Christianity became the religion of the Empire under Constantine, there had been some Christians who preferred physical survival to martyrdom.

When the persecution ceased, the question became what to do with those Christians — lay people and clerics — who had gone "soft" and compromised with the Imperial authorities?

Augustine's proposal, which prevailed, was that ministry and standing in the church was not dependent on the sanctity of the office holder, that the exercise of ministry was God's work through unworthy means — weak human beings.

China today

Switch to China today — an authoritarian, one party state determined to persecute any ideological variant it deems a threat to its total control of everything in the social and political life of the nation.

The risk really isn't that the church will move ever more under the government's control.

It already is completely — whether in the open or "underground" church.

The risk in the moves now being made by the Vatican is that they will split the church in China deeply — those who accept that the Communist Party really does run China and those who believe only stubborn resistance is the way to go.

I have a cordial and friendly personal relationship with Cardinal Zen.

He is an engaging, witty and sometimes very funny person to be with.

Cardinal Zen hasn't visited China for 20 years

But his answer to this question about the church in China at least has been completely consistent for at least two decades and it comes down to the belief that the only real Catholic in China is or should prepare to be a martyr.

Over at least two decades, in the course of which he has not visited China at all, he has maintained that the only way to deal with those running the country and therefore, in a communist society, supervising the Catholic community is to have nothing to do with them.

That view is one that can be sustained from the comfortable and secure distance of Hong Kong where Cardinal Zen lives.

It's an unaffordable luxury in the Peoples Republic of China. And that is where the basic differences lie in the approach to the life of the church in China.

Two different approaches

But what Cardinal Zen has yet to answer is this question: What do you propose should be done for the millions of Catholics who have to live daily with the Communist Party measuring your every heartbeat?

There are two approaches to any set of negotiations: Walk away from the table and suspend discussions or stay at the table and negotiate the best terms you can.

Cardinal Zen is and always has been for walking away and leaving Catholics in China in all their variety to their own devices.

Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and people at the Vatican prefer to remain at the table.

• Father Michael Kelly SJ is executive director of ucanews.com and based in Thailand.
  First published in UCANews.com. Reprinted with permission.
  

More than 200 people gathered to voice their concerns over a deal they say will "sell out" faithful Chinese Catholics.

"It's a precarious situation. There's a real danger of division," a priest said.

Those attending the vigil share Hong Kong Cardinal Zen's concerns.

After visiting the Pope in January, Zen said he thought the Vatican is selling out the Catholic Church in China.

In China Catholics are split between those in the "underground" Church who are loyal to the Pope and the government-backed Catholic Patriotic Association. The government association appoints bishops without Rome's approval.

Protesters say the proposed deal would give the Vatican a say in the appointment of Chinese bishops in exchange for recognising ones already appointed by the Chinese government.

A group of Catholics have signed an open letter warning of "schism" if the deal goes ahead.

The letter says the bishops appointed by Beijing "do not have the trust of the faithful, and have never repented publicly.

"We fully understand that the Holy See is eager to be able to evangelize in China more effectively. However, we are deeply worried that the deal would create damages that cannot be remedied," the letter says.

It continues: "If they were to be recognized as legitimate, the faithful in Greater China would be plunged into confusion and pain, and schism would be created in the Church in China."

"We are worried that the agreement would not only fail to guarantee the limited freedom desired by the Church, but also damage the Church's holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity, and deal a blow to the Church's moral power.

"We earnestly ask you, with the love of the people of God, appeal to the Holy See: Please rethink the current agreement, and stop making an irreversible and regrettable mistake."

Source

• Lifesite
• Catholic Herald
• Image: VOA News

Hong Kong-based 85 year old Zen, who is the is China's highest ranking prelate, said China's communist rulers want "total surrender" from the Church.

Pope Francis "is really naïve" and "doesn't know the Chinese communists," he said.

"The people around him are not good at all. They have very wrong ideas. And I'm afraid that they may sell out our underground Church."

China's underground Catholic church leaders have faced imprisonment for their fidelity to the Holy See.

They refuse to submit to the "patriotic" church under the Communist government's control.

Zen says the deal being brokered where the Chinese government nominate bishops for the pope to accept or reject would mean the Vatican accepts the government-controlled Church

However, Francis recently defended the practice of religious liberty in China, which is an officially atheist country.

He says in China churches are full and religion is freely practised.

The Vatican is engaged in ongoing dialogue with China.

A commission has been set up that meets every three months, with Beijing and the Vatican alternating as hosts of the encounter.

Source

• Breitbart
• Lifesite News
• Image:www.pfmj.cz

Cardinal Zen said Pope Benedict XVI set appropriate policies, but "his work was wasted by others close to him, who did not follow his line".

"Saying ‘others' I mean people in the Vatican, but also those outside who, without the help of the Holy See, would not have done so much damage," he said in an article on the AsiaNews website.

Earlier, in an interview with the Catholic Register in Toronto, he warned of an impending schism in the Chinese Catholic Church and blamed the Vatican for allowing Communist Party officials to run roughshod over China's bishops.

"For a long time I have abstained from talking about the Holy See," he said. "But I think that is unfair. We must be fair to everybody. They [Vatican officials] should take the responsibility."

The 81-year-old cardinal said it is obvious that the official Chinese bishops' conference is controlled by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, which also founded the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association in 1957.

"You can see all the presidents and vice presidents, both in the patriotic association and the so-called bishops' conference — they are all slaves of the government," he said. "There are some illegitimate, some legitimate [bishops], but they are all on the side of the government."

Cardinal Zen said the Catholic faith in China is rooted through Chinese priests and lay people.

"The hope is in the faithful and in the priests, provided we don't disappoint them too long," he said. "The faithful, the majority of priests, are still OK. If they keep their faith then we have a future. The priests can help their bishop, they can convert their bishop, not easily but there is a hope."

Sources:

Catholic Register

AsiaNews

Image: AsiaNews

"To show my grief, I will, for three days and three nights, abstain from food, excepting water and Holy Communion", said the cardinal, who will be 80 in January.

The Chinese born-cardinal made clear, however, that the Catholic Church would "respect" and abide by the Court's ruling, and would not engage in civil disobedience. "Since we have no intention to surrender any school, civil disobedience is out of the question", he said.

Thee cardinal explained that the new policy introduced in 2004 "has seriously damaged" the Catholic Church's "right of running schools" and, moreover, "is against what is being granted in the Basic Law" - Hong Kong's Constitution.

The policy takes the management of schools away from sponsoring bodies, such as the Catholic Church, and gives it to an "Incorporated Management Committee".

Though the Church, can nominate 60% of the Management Committee, the cardinal and other Church leaders anticipate that a strong, well trained minority, adverse to Catholicism, could effectively hijack the Management Committee's work.

Under this new Ordinance, Zen said, "we would have no more, as in the past, the guarantee that we could run the schools according to our vision and mission".

Led by Zen, then bishop of Hong Kong, it decided to challenge the Ordinance in the courts and seek an exemption for its schools. After 6 years litigation, the Church lost that battle on with the Court of Final Appeal's ruling on October 3.

The Court's decision "is final", the cardinal told the press. Nevertheless, he hoped and prayed that with support "from Catholics and non-Catholic friends" the Church schools would still be able to provide "a truly Catholic education" to Hong Kong's young people.

Full story: Vatican Insider
Image: CNA