Hong Kong police arrest Cardinal Joseph Zen over ‘collusion with foreign forces’

Joseph Zen, an outspoken opponent of secretive China-Vatican deal believed to give CCP control over appointment of bishops, has been arrested.

Cardinal Joseph Zen has been arrested in Hong Kong on charges of ‘collusion with foreign forces’. Picture: AFP

Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen, 90, was arrested by Hong Kong police on Wednesday on charges of “collusion with foreign forces”, Catholic sources in Rome told The Australian overnight.

Cardinal Zen was being held in Chai Wan police station close to his church residence, according to a police sergeant at the scene, Reuters reported in the early hours of Thursday, Australian time.

He was being held with four others who helped run a now-disbanded humanitarian fund for protesters, a legal source said. They were barrister Margaret Ng, 74; activist and pop singer Denise Ho; former lawmaker Cyd Ho; and former academic Hui Po-keung.

The five were trustees of the “612 Humanitarian Relief Fund” which helped protesters who had been arrested during pro-democracy, anti-China protests in 2019 to help pay their legal and medical fees.

Cardinal Zen has been a close associate of jailed newspaper proprietor Jimmy Lai, founder of the popular pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, which printed its final edition in Hong Kong in June last year.

More than a million copies were printed, with Hong Kong people queuing for hours to buy one. Apple Daily is now published digitally in Taiwan.

Cardinal Zen has also been a thorn in the side of the Chinese Communist Party and the Vatican for six years over his outspoken opposition to the secretive China-Vatican deal finalised in 2018 and renewed in 2020.

The extraordinary deal is believed to give the CCP control over the appointment of Catholic bishops, but its terms have never been sighted. It also favours the officially approved Patriotic Association “Catholic Church” over the underground Church that remained loyal to the Vatican for decades, and whose bishops, priests and attendees were frequently arrested, imprisoned and tortured.

Cardinal Zen’s arrest will put pressure on the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Petro Parolin, the main architect of the secret agreement, and Pope Francis, to break their customary silence about ongoing religious and other human rights abuses in China.

In October last year, Cardinal Parolin voiced concerns about AUKUS, Australia’s defence collaboration with the US and Britain, especially the agreement to help the Australian Navy acquire a fleet of eight nuclear-powered submarines.

Cardinal Zen warned against the CCP deal when it was first mooted in 2016. He told the Wall Street Journal: “Pope Francis has no real knowledge of communism experience in Argentina, where military dictators and rich elites did evil while actual or accused communists suffered trying to help the downtrodden.

“So the Holy Father knew the persecuted communists, not the communist persecutors. He knew the communists killed by the government, not the communist governments who killed thousands and hundreds of thousands of people. In China it was tens of millions.’’

In 2020, Cardinal Zen travelled to Rome to warn Francis against renewing the deal, but the Cardinal was denied an audience. At the time, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the deal had compromised the Vatican’s moral authority.

Additional reporting: Reuters