On Hong Kong the Pope Is Silent. Obedient to Beijing

Of course! If he upsets his commie pals, they might do something nasty, like destroy Churches and Shrines, or prohibit religious education of children!

From Settimo Cielo

By Sandro Magister

Silence on everything that could irritate the Beijing authorities is certainly one of the many prices that the Holy See has agreed to pay, to keep from breaking up the fragile accord on the appointment of bishops that it sealed on September 22 2018 with China.

It is a silence to which the first to submit is Pope Francis, usually extremely talkative about everyone and everything, but who on the popular protests that have been raging in Hong Kong for three months has not said word one.
And yet from the beginning the protests have seen in the front ranks Christians, and above all Catholics, who are only 8 percent of the city’s population but are very active and influential, starting with their highest authorities:

In June, leading the first prayer vigils (see photo) in front of the building of the Legislative Council was the auxiliary bishop of Hong Kong, Joseph Ha Chishing, a Franciscan friar. And the first major appeal for the repeal of the law on extradition to China - the fuse that ignited the protest - was headed with the signature of Cardinal John Tong Hon, former bishop of Hong Kong and currently apostolic administrator of the diocese while waiting for Rome to appoint his successor.

In the diocese of Hong Kong, Rome need not submit to the chains that in mainland China subordinate the selection of every new bishop to the tyranny of the Beijing authorities. But the delay in the appointment is also evidence of the Holy See’s fear of irritating its Chinese counterparty.

The result is that, in the protest, the Catholics of Hong Kong - bishops, priests, nuns, faithful - find themselves alone, without any support on the part of Rome.

And if they speak, they can do so only on their own account, as auxiliary bishop Ha needed to preface in the interview that he gave a few days ago to the agency “Asia News” of the Pontifical Institute For Foreign Missions:

But the silence on Hong Kong is not the only element revelatory of the difficult 
relationship that obtains between the Church of Rome and China.

For a more general overview of the tyranny exercised by the Chinese authorities over the religions, and over the Catholic Church in particular even after last year’s accord, the talk given at a conference in Germany at the end of August by the director of “Asia News,” Fr. Bernardo Cervellera, is more instructive than ever.

The talk is reproduced below with the author’s permission. But without the very helpful documentary apparatus - links, notes - that is found in the original text available on “Asia News” in Italian, English, and Spanish, as well as in Chinese:

Aspects of Religious Policy in China,by Bernardo Cervellera