You’re invited! Join LifeSite in celebrating 25 years of pro-life and pro-family reporting at our anniversary Gala August 17th in Naples, Florida. Tickets and sponsorships can be purchased by clicking here.
(LifeSiteNews) – On Wednesday it was announced that Cardinal Joseph Zen had been arrested by the authorities in Hong Kong. The investigation and arrest was made by the special police section set up by the government of Beijing to watch over Chinese national security, that is, to suppress any form of dissent or protest over the violations of human rights committed by the Chinese dictatorship.
The elderly Cardinal – who in the past has expressed strong criticism of the secret agreement signed between the Chinese regime and the Holy See – was interrogated and then released on bail. His passport was also confiscated. What has happened is a very grave violation of the freedoms and rights enjoyed by every human person, all the more deplorable in the case of a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. The Vatican Press Office, with obvious embarrassment, limited itself to expressing “concern” without making any formal protest to the Beijing government. Only a few days earlier, ten other priests of the Baoding community, who belong to the clandestine Church, were abducted and sent to forced “re-education” by the Chinese Communist Party because they were unwilling to join the patriotic sect, adding to the list of abuses and oppression against Catholics who are faithful to the underground Church.
The poisoned fruits of the Sino-Vatican Agreement are now apparent. The Bergoglian church prefers to remain silent about the persecution of Catholics who belong to the clandestine Church after having handed them over to retaliations at the hands of the patriotic sect and the Chinese Communist Party. In exchange, Beijing rewards the Holy See for its services with substantial annual funding: the mercenaries allow themselves to be bought with thirty pieces of silver that are dripping with the blood of the martyrs of the Church of silence.
Please SIGN this petition calling on Hong Kong leader John Lee to cease all intimidation of Cardinal Joseph Zen following his arrest for supporting pro-democracy demonstrators.
Cardinal Joseph Zen, the Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong, was arrested by the pro-China security police in Hong Kong in a major escalation of intimidation against pro-freedom activists in the region.
Zen was one of four people arrested on May 11th on suspicion of "colluding with foreign forces", with the 90-year-old's detention marking the first high-profile move by Hong Kong's new Chief Executive, John Lee.
The Hong Kong security police targeted Zen as a trustee of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, which provided “legal, medical, psychological and emergency financial assistance” to those involved in the 2019 protests against the government’s Extradition Law Amendment Bill, which allows prisoners to be transferred to China for trial.
Cardinal Zen has since been released, but his passport was confiscated to prevent him leaving Hong Kong.
The arrest was made possible under the terms of Hong Kong’s draconian national security law, passed in 2020, which Zen warned would be used to silence the Church.
The outspoken cardinal previously confessed that he was prepared to go to prison under the terms of the new law, saying, “If right and proper words were considered against their law, I will endure all the suing, trials, and arrests.”
Cardinal Zen is a hero to Hong Kongers, and needs the world to stand with him today.
SIGN and SHARE this urgent petition calling on Hong Kong leader John Lee to cease all intimidation of Cardinal Zen today.
The people of Hong Kong, including Cardinal Zen, have lived under the shadow of Beijing since 1997, and know personally how oppressive Chinese Communist Party rule is.
This arrest of a Catholic cardinal by communist authorities in Hong Kong is a stark reminder of the harsh realities of life for all citizens of the region.
Cardinal Zen's plight demands the attention of all people of good-will, as his spirit of resistance in the face of tyranny continues to inspire new generations of Hong Kongers to defy the horrors of communist rule.
Please stand with Cardinal Zen today - SIGN and SHARE this petition calling for an end to the intimidatory tactics of the Chinese Communist Party's proxy leaders in Hong Kong.
MORE INFORMATION:
In September 2020, on the eve of the renewal of that infamous agreement, Cardinal Zen came to Rome to meet Bergoglio, who humiliated him with an indignant refusal to meet with him because of the Chinese Cardinal’s well-known position on the Sino-Vatican Agreement and its repeated violations. This affront against a Prince of the Church gave a clear signal to the Chinese dictatorship, which then felt free to act without fearing consequences or that the Vatican would take a position. The tenant of the Vatican, however, finds time to receive high-ranking representatives of the New World Order, representatives of globalism and usurious finance, dictators and war criminals, and even the wives of the soldiers fighting in the neo-Nazi Azov battalion, which in the past few days used civilians as human shields during the Russian siege of the Azovstal steel plant. Someone pointed out that the Russian-Canadian activist Pyotr Verzilov accompanied two Ukrainian wives to the papal audience: he is the founder and spokesman of the feminist group P*ssy Riot, known for carrying out profanations and sacrileges against Orthodox churches in Russia, following the model of Femen in the West. It leaves us disconcerted that the representative of an anti-Christian movement that has made blasphemy the heart of its subversive action has been admitted to an audience at the Vatican.
This attitude of unequalled duplicity, that is anything but ambiguous, shows how Bergoglio’s deep church is totally aligned not only with the psycho-pandemic narrative but also with the insane management of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis by the deep state. Cardinal Zen is added to the dubia Cardinals in the list of those to whom Bergoglio has never responded to or received in audience, even as he has personally handwritten a letter of support to James Martin, S.J. With that umpteenth endorsement, Bergoglio confirms that he intends to normalize the pan-sexualism of the infamous LGBTQ ideology within the Catholic Church, and along with it the consequent eternal perdition of many souls.
The wisdom and prudence of Vatican diplomacy, a precious legacy of centuries of experience that was once admired by all the chanceries of the world, is today under the guidance of Pietro Parolin but a distant memory: courtly interests, economic profits, and criminal connivances all shamelessly prevail right before the eyes of both God and men. The faithful look on scandalized at the transformation of the Holy See into a den of thieves (Lk 19:46).
I exhort my brother bishops and priests as well as faithful laity to support His Eminence with prayer, expressing your closeness and solidarity with him at this difficult time. May the trials to which Cardinal Zen is being subjected merit from Heaven that reward which the Lord has promised to those who serve the Holy Church with fidelity and who remain steadfast in the Faith, without allowing themselves to be contaminated by the spirit of the world.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
13 May 2022
Anniversary of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima