Commentary 25/10/02 Pope Leo should unveil a bold new approach toward China

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He must live up to his namesake and champion social justice, demand the release of political prisoners

Published: October 02, 2025 04:03 AM GMT ▾

Pope Leo XIV gestures after delivering the Regina Caeli prayer from the main central loggia of St Peter's basilica in The Vatican, on May 11. (Photo: AFP)

A fortnight ago, our new Pope, Leo XIV, signaled in his first interview since his election the possibility of a shift in the Vatican’s approach to China.

Without giving away much detail or precipitating any immediate change, he indicated that he is in dialogue with persecuted Chinese Catholics — and is weighing up the future of the Sino-Vatican agreement.

He indicated he would continue the current policy in the short-term, but is listening to “a significant group of Chinese Catholics who for many years have lived under some kind of oppression.”

While still somewhat ambiguous, his remarks already represent a shift from the position of his predecessor Pope Francis, and will give critics of the Sino-Vatican deal — and the papacy’s silence on China’s human rights crisis — some cause for hope.

Leo is the first pope ever to have visited mainland China, a tour he made when he served as superior general of the Augustinian order.

Last month, he took the step of creating a new diocese in China, in Zhangjiakou, with the same name as a diocese that Beijing’s state-controlled Catholic institution created without Vatican approval.

It is early days, too early to tell whether Leo will be more willing than Francis to challenge Beijing, but some of these early signs offer fragments of encouragement.

In contrast, Hong Kong’s Cardinal Stephen Chow — whose appointment I heralded — has so far proven to be a disappointment. No doubt a good man, a pastoral leader, inspired by his Jesuit spirituality, nonetheless, he has needlessly bent over backwards to please Beijing.

In recent remarks, Cardinal Chow has denied that there is any religious persecution in Hong Kong. He obviously has not read the report I wrote two years ago — Sell Out My Soul: The Impending Threats to Freedom of Religion or Belief in Hong Kong — published by Hong Kong Watch, or the subsequent report by the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong titled Hostile Takeover: The CCP and Hong Kong’s Religious Communities.

If you take a strict definition of the term “persecution” as meaning the most severe, cruel, systematic violations of human rights, then Cardinal Chow may be right.

Christians and other religious groups in Hong Kong are not being locked up, tortured, or killed for their faith in the way they are in many other parts of the world. Places of worship are not being torched or shut down.

People in Hong Kong can still go to the mosque on Friday, the synagogue on Saturday, and the church on Sunday. Buddhist and Hindu temples still operate relatively freely. People can gather to pray without too much difficulty.

Life for religious adherents in Hong Kong is still easier than it is for their co-religionists in mainland China.

That said, the cardinal’s dismissal of religious persecution is too subservient to Beijing’s narrative. While there may not yet be outright violent persecution, there is clearly mounting pressure on and serious violations of freedom of religion or belief.

Freedom of religion or belief is about more than just the right to go to worship.

In any society, where other civil rights, political freedoms and basic liberties — particularly freedom of expression‎ and freedom of assembly and association — are undermined and under threat, inevitably freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, as set out in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is compromised.

We already know that priests and pastors self-censor their sermons in Hong Kong, avoiding sensitive topics or provocative passages of Holy Scripture. Places of worship are under increasing surveillance and infiltration.

And churches — Catholic and Protestant — in Hong Kong are already enmeshed in Xi Jinping’s campaign of “Sinicization” of religion, an initiative that is much more about co-option into the Chinese Communist Party’s political fold than it is about any cultural adaptations.

Hong Kong’s schools — many of which are faith-based — are now under the Chinese Communist Party’s direct control, with their curricula filled with Beijing’s atheistic propaganda.

So while Cardinal Chow might be technically correct to say that Hong Kong has not yet reached the stage of religious persecution, he is wrong to disregard the looming threat.

Freedom of worship in its narrowest interpretation — the freedom to go to church, or to the mosque, temple, or synagogue — may still exist. But can it be exercised without fear? Can preachers teach freely?

There may not be — yet — the destruction of crosses or dynamiting of churches in Hong Kong that we have seen in mainland China. But the repression of religion is more subtle than that.

It is a slow smothering, a silent suffocation, a long, almost unnoticed strangulation. Rather than shed blood by chopping off heads, Beijing has chosen to put the Church — and religion more generally — in a headlock.

Obey and kowtow, and the headlock will loosen slightly. Resist, and it will tighten.

Three of Hong Kong’s best-known Catholics stand as symbols of the silencing of the faith.

The city’s Bishop Emeritus, the courageous 93-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, once a vibrant voice for democracy, is now confined both by old age, ill-health, but most of all by Beijing’s restrictions.

Hong Kong’s most prominent lay Catholic, media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, soon to turn 78, languishes in solitary confinement in jail, denied the right to receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion and facing the prospect of dying in prison on trumped-up charges stemming from his peaceful defense of Hong Kong’s once vaunted but rapidly disappearing freedoms.

And the father of Hong Kong’s democracy movement, 87-year-old Martin Lee, a devout lay Catholic, has been driven out of public service and into silence.

It is not impossible that Cardinal Chow may be advocating for these three men, and other brave Hong Kongers, behind the scenes. One has to hope so, and one must not discount the challenges anyone holding his office would face in the current circumstances.

But even if he feels forced to take a vow of silence on the repression in Hong Kong, he does not have to ingratiate himself with Beijing with as much panache as he has. He should remember that as a Catholic, genuflection should be reserved for the altar of God, not the gates of Zhongnanhai.

Which brings us back to the question of what Pope Leo XIV does next.

He is right to take his time, to weigh up the choices before him, to listen widely.

Eventually, however, he should discard, suspend, or at the very least review the Sino-Vatican agreement — and insist on certain conditions upon its renewal, including the release of Jimmy Lai and of all Catholic clergy from jails in China.

But in the meantime, there are five steps he could take to show his intentions.

First, at the earliest opportunity, he should pray for Jimmy Lai, publicly, perhaps at a Sunday Angelus, and demand his right to receive the Sacraments and regain his freedom.

Second, he should invite Jimmy’s son, Sebastien Lai, to an audience as soon as possible.

Third, if he is serious about “listening,” he should call Cardinal Zen to recognise his courageous loyalty to the Vatican and hear his sage advice.

Fourth, he should set up a call with His Holiness the Dalai Lama to discuss religious freedom and the future of China and Tibet.

And fifth, he should pray for an end to the genocide of the Uyghurs, closure of the prison camps in Xinjiang, and an end to slave labor in supply chains.

There is, of course, much more he should do. But these five steps offer a starting point.

Pope Leo should live up to his namesake and champion social justice, demand the release of political prisoners, and unveil an entirely new, bold approach by the Vatican towards China.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.