Retired Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen (陳日君) has no illusions about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); neither does Pope Francis.
However, the two men have taken diametrically opposite approaches in how they deal with the Chinese communists: The former, vocal and active, has been arrested and faces, at the age of 90, a potential jail sentence; the latter is silent.
For critics of the pope’s reticence on calling the CCP out on human rights abuses its campaign of cultural genocide against Uighurs in Xinjiang, its crackdown on the Hong Kong democracy movement and the arrest of a nonagenarian bishop his