n Thanksgiving Day, 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, a Hong Kong priest, was convicted, along with five others, of failing to register a defunct charitable organization that tried to help pro-democracy demonstrators targeted by the regime.
Ostensibly, the charges stemmed from the group’s failure to submit paperwork to authorities. But Chinese people of faith and governments around the world understood the real message Beijing was sending when it arrested Fr. Zen, known as “the conscience of Hong Kong,” last May. The purpose of the prosecution, said U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price, was to show that China’s government “will pursue all means necessary to stifle dissent and undercut protective rights and freedoms.”
Among the human rights that Beijing is most hostile to is freedom of religion. And how the government has compromised the Catholic Church is a case study in the difficulty of resisting its relentless efforts at repression.
In 2016, when Xi, China’s president and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, first announced his policy of “Sinicization” of religion in his country, the response of the Vatican was to try to accommodate Beijing’s leaders.
