Retired Cardinal Joseph Zen is more welcome in Hong Kong than Rome
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Perhaps Father Robert Sirico, now well into his seventies, has forgotten that sound piece of advice. The influential US Catholic author and educator has counselled local firebrand Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, who is in Rome after attending the funeral of Pope Francis, to 'defect'. Seriously, are we still in the Soviet era?
'His defection would also signal to Hong Kong's beleaguered Catholics that their struggle isn't forgotten,' Sirico wrote in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
What beleaguered struggle? The city's Catholics, among them at least two former chief executives of the Hong Kong SAR and countless senior civil servants – and yours truly used to be a Catholic too – are no happier or unhappier than their brethren in the United States.
Sirico should have first checked with the Hong Kong diocese about the religious state of the city before mouthing off in the WSJ, which of course, runs anything anti-China.
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'I haven't consulted Cardinal Zen on this, but as a priest and friend of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement,' he wrote, 'I urge him to stay in Rome. His presence in the Vatican would serve as a powerful rebuke to Beijing's oppression and a beacon of hope for the faithful.'
He really should have asked first. Perhaps the learned clergyman from America has read too much WSJ and its kind of journalism, rather than diversifying to try Italian, Hong Kong and mainland Chinese publications, including this newspaper. And no, I don't mean my own biased opinion pieces but the far more objective and excellent reporting by my news colleagues.
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