The 93-year-old retired bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong, Cardinal Joseph Zen, will celebrate his 94th birthday next week. Reports have indicated that this will be his third permitted departure since his passport was confiscated in 2022. He arrived in the Vatican on Wednesday (7th) to attend a special meeting with Pope Leo XIV and had a private audience, marking his first private audience with the Pope since 2023.
According to the Vatican’s “The College of Cardinals Report” on Wednesday (7th), Cardinal Zen was recently granted temporary travel documents to leave Hong Kong and travel to Rome, where he was received by Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday morning and attended the first extraordinary consistory of cardinals since the Pope took office.
Cardinal Zen is a trustee of the “612 Humanitarian Fund.” In 2022, he was arrested by the Hong Kong National Security Department on charges of “colluding with foreign forces” and later fined for violating the Societies Ordinance. Despite the national security charges not resulting in prosecution or the investigation being concluded, his travel documents have been withheld by the police until now.
Over the past three years, Cardinal Zen has been briefly returned his passport twice, once in January 2023 and again in April last year, to attend the funerals of retired Popes Benedict XVI and Francis. He has expressed to the media that he has no intention of permanently leaving Hong Kong, stating, “Where my sheep are, there I am.”
Cardinal Zen has long been a voice for the persecuted underground Church in China and has sought private meetings with Pope Francis on multiple occasions. In September 2020, he traveled to Rome hoping to explain the persecution faced by the Church in China to Pope Francis and urge the Vatican to take a tougher stance against Beijing. However, he was only received by Pope Francis in 2023 and was unable to effect change before Pope Francis passed away.
Pope Leo XIV, who took office in May last year, met with the wife and daughters of Jimmy Lai, the founder of Apple Daily, in October and also sent condolences to the Hong Kong Diocese following a fire at the Peng Fook Yuen estate in Tai Po the following month.
Additionally, a commentary article in the Hong Kong Economic Journal revealed that Cardinal Zen and Pope Leo XIV met for nearly an hour, discussing issues related to bishop appointments between the Vatican and China, the promotion of Auxiliary Bishop Peter Choy Wai-man to Coadjutor Bishop as a figure more acceptable to Beijing in the Hong Kong Diocese, and also touched on cases related to national security involving Jimmy Lai.
The article quoted sources from the diocese saying that the meeting between Pope Leo XIV and Cardinal Zen to some extent indicates subtle changes in the new Pope’s stance on Hong Kong and Sino-Vatican relations.