Cardinal Joseph Zen, the bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, has said that the situation of the Church in China is dire. The cardinal also predicted the end of the underground Church.
“The situation is very bad. And the source is not the pope. The pope doesn’t know much about China,” Cardinal Zen told CNA on Tuesday. “The Holy Father Francis shows special affection to me,” Zen said but added that he is in confrontation with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State. “I’m fighting Parolin. Because the bad things come from him,” Zen added.
Parolin, Cardinal Zen said, is “so optimistic about the so-called ‘Ostpolitik’, the compromise.” But, the cardinal told CNA, “you cannot compromise” with the Chinese Communist Party, whom he called “persecutors” of the faith. “They want complete surrender. That’s communism.” Cardinal Zen spoke to CNA Feb. 11 while in Washington, DC, to meet with members of Congress at the office of U.S. Congressman Chris Smith (R-N.J.).
After the meeting, Smith told CNA that Cardinal Zen “is a Saint Paul of our time, who is not only a holy and an effective witness for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he is also a man of great truth about what is really happening in China.” During the meeting, the cardinal and the members of Congress talked about China’s “Sinicization” program of religious practice in the country and the Communist government’s years-long effort to forcibly bring religion under its control.
Some celebrations of Christmas have been banned in China, Bibles have been rewritten by order of regional authorities, and vocations are reportedly down, Zen told the lawmakers. “I think it’s had a paralyzing effect on the Catholic Church,” Smith said. CNA
