‘Give them freedom’ – PNG bishops denounce six-year refugee detention

Valparaiso, Chile, May 13, 2018 / 03:52 pm (ACI Prensa).- As infants, Monica and Cristian Moya were hovering on the verge of death. But after their mother consecrated them to the Virgin Mary, they recovered from a severe case of pneumonia.

Today, Cristian Moya is a priest. Sister Monica Moya made her final vows with the Congregation of the Daughters of Saint Mary of Providence – founded by Saint Luis Guanella – last year.

In an interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency, Sister Monica recalled that their mother told them the story of their consecration to Mary just a few years ago.

The twins were born January 15, 1974 in San Antonio Province in the Valparaiso Region of Chile.

They were struck with a severe case of pneumonia when they were about three months old. In critical condition at the hospital, doctors informed their parents “that a blood transfusion was the last thing they would do for us,” the sister said.

Their mother – who had lost her first child at the age of one due to a heart condition – decided to consecrate the twins to the Virgin Mary, under her title of Nuestra Señora Purísima of Lo Vasquez (Our Lady Most Pure), a very well-known and beloved Marian title in Chile.

“My mom says that the only thing that came to her mind was to offer us to the Virgin and leave us in her hands. After that our recovery occurred,” Sister Monica said.

“Maybe you can look at this as a simple coincidence, but now one of her children is a priest and the other a nun,” she reflected.

Also notable, she added, is that Cristian “did his priestly formation in the seminary that is next to the Shrine of Nuestra Señora Purísima de Lo Vásquez,” the same church where their mother had gone to beg for the recovery of her children.

Sister Monica said that her mother’s offering “impacted me a lot and has made me think that the Lord took charge of taking me on this path, which… my parents also contributed to through prayer, Christian formation, and by themselves as a married couple.”

Besides the Virgin Mary, the nun’s vocation was also strongly tied to the person of Saint Joseph, patron of her congregation and whose solemnity coincides with the day she became a postulant, then a novice and also when she made her first vows.

While it is customary for a bishop to officiate the ceremony of final vows, Sister Monica was able to obtain permission for her twin brother to preside at the Mass.

Sister Monica considers her vocation “a gift and a miracle.”

“It’s something that has surpassed everything my mind can understand, it is a very particular grace that helps me say ‘yes’ every day.”

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Cardinal Joseph Zen arrives at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on May 24, 2022, in Hong Kong, China. / Photo by Louise Delmotte/Getty Images

Rome Newsroom, Oct 27, 2022 / 08:24 am (CNA).

The trial of Cardinal Joseph Zen resumed in Hong Kong on Wednesday, days after the Vatican announced the renewal of its agreement with Beijing. 

Prosecutor Anthony Chau Tin-hang took the floor on Oct. 26 in the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court, where Zen and five other pro-democracy activists have been charged for failing to apply for local society registration for the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund between 2019 and 2021.

The prosecution argued that the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund needed to be registered with the police because of its “massive” size and “systematic” mode of operation, according to the South China Morning Post.

The fund helped pro-democracy protesters pay their legal fees until it dissolved itself in October 2021. Chau argued that the fund was political in nature and therefore did not qualify for the exemption in Hong Kong’s Societies Ordinance for organizations set up “for religious, charitable, social, or recreational purposes.”

The defense will make its arguments before Principal Magistrate Ada Yim Shun-yee on Oct. 31.

According to the defense, the Societies Ordinance was unconstitutional, gave an ambiguous definition of a “society,” and had requirements that went beyond what was necessary to protect national security, Asia News reported.

The Societies Ordinance required any club, company, partnership, or association of persons to register with the police commissioner or ask for an exemption within one month of its establishment. 

Zen and the other democracy activists could face a $1,200 (HK$10,000) fine for violating the ordinance. 

The cardinal was arrested in May along with other democracy activists under Hong Kong’s strict national security law but now faces a less serious charge. He has been free on bail since early May.

All the defendants have pleaded not guilty. Those accused with Zen are lawyer Margaret Ng, singer-activist Denise Ho, cultural studies scholar Hui Po-keung, activist Sze Ching-wee, and ex-legislator Cyd Ho, who is already jailed for a different charge.

The 90-year-old and retired bishop of Hong Kong’s most recent court appearance took place four days after the Vatican announced its decision to renew for another two years its provisional agreement with the Chinese government on the appointment of bishops. Zen has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Vatican’s agreement with China since it was first signed in 2018.

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CNA Staff, Oct 7, 2020 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Joseph Zen has rejected claims that the 2018 Vatican-China deal was approved in draft form by Pope Benedict XVI, and accused Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin of “manipulating” Pope Francis on the Church’s engagement with China.

In an essay published on his blog Oct. 7, Cardinal Zen, the emeritus Bishop of Hong Kong, offered an extended and personal critique of an Oct. 3 speech given by Parolin on the history and future of the Church’s missionary activity in China.

“I read the speech given by Cardinal Parolin,” Zen said. “It’s sickening!” 

“As [Parolin] is not stupid and ignorant,” Zen said he was left to conclude that Parolin “told a series of lies with eyes open.”

“The most repugnant thing is the insult to the venerable Benedict XVI by saying that he approved at the time the agreement signed by the Holy See two years ago, knowing that our sweetest, most gentle Benedict certainly will not come out to deny it,” Zen said. 

The Vatican-China agreement on the ordination of bishops, ratified in September 2018, is seen by the Vatican as an effort to help unify the underground Catholic Church in China–which has always remained in communion with Rome–with the state-sanctioned Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. Following the agreement, seven illicitly ordained bishops of the CPCA were brought into full communion with Rome. 

Cardinal Parolin said in his Oct. 3 speech that the pastoral goal of the agreement was to free up local churches to “dedicate themselves to the mission of proclaiming the Gospel.”

During his speech on Oct. 3 in Milan, Cardinal Parolin reiterated the Vatican’s commitment to a provisional renewal of the agreement, which expires on Oct. 22. 

“For the dialogue to bear more consistent fruit it is necessary to continue it,” the Secretary of State said at an event marking the 150th anniversary of the presence of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) in China.

In his Oct. 3 speech on the subject, Parolin cited Pope Benedict XVI in his discussion of the Church’s missionary efforts in China. Pope Benedict, who had quoted his own predecessor, St. John Paul II said in 2007: “It is no mystery to anyone that the Holy See, in the name of the entire Catholic Church and – I believe – for the benefit of all humanity, he hopes to open a space for dialogue with the authorities of the People’s Republic of China, in which, once past misunderstandings have been overcome, we can work together for the good of the Chinese people and for peace in the world.”

Parolin also cited Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the dean of the College of Cardinals and former prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, who said in March according to Parolin that “Pope Benedict XVI [approved] the draft agreement on the appointment of bishops in China, which it was only possible to sign in 2018.”

Cardinal Zen disputed Re’s alleged remarks, calling it “very ridiculous and humiliating” for Re “to be ‘used’ once again to support the falsehoods of the Most Eminent Secretary.”

He accused Cardinal Parolin of “lying” about Pope Benedict’s approval of a draft agreement with China, and of manipulating Pope Francis on the agreement.

“Parolin knows he is lying, he knows that I know he is a liar, he knows that I will tell everyone that he is a liar, so in addition to being cheeky, he is also bold,” Cardinal Zen said.

Christians in China have continued to be persecuted and harassed by authorities, Zen said, “despite the agreement.” 

Yet, “it seems that in order to save the agreement, the Holy See is closing both eyes on all the injustices that the Communist Party inflicts on the Chinese people,” he said. 

In his Oct. 3 speech, Parolin said he had seen signs that the agreement was helping unify underground Catholics with members of the CPCA, and would “definitely” help the Church avoid illicit consecrations of bishops in the future. 

There have been “misunderstandings” over the agreement, he said, acknowledging that while there are still “many other problems” that Catholics in China face, they cannot all be addressed at once. 

“[W]e know that the road to full normalization will still be a long one, as Benedict XVI predicted in 2007,” Parolin said.

However, Parolin emphasized that the agreement “concerns exclusively the appointment of bishops,” and the Vatican has noted that no further illicit consecrations have taken place since the deal was signed in 2018. 

Zen dismissed that as a worthwhile achievement.

“All legitimate bishops, but in a Church that is objectively schismatic, is that good? Is it progress? Is this the beginning of what kind of journey?”

The Vatican-China agreement gave CCP officials a say in the ordination of bishops, but also allowed for the enforcement of “Sinicization” in Church matters, Zen said. 

The policy of “sinicization”, announced by Chinese president Xi Jinping in 2015, aims to enforce Chinese and Communist identity on all religious practice in the country. It has included instructing churches to remove images of the Ten Commandments and replace them with sayings of Chairman Mao and Xi.

Parolin has previously said that “inculturation is an essential condition for a sound proclamation of the Gospel which, in order to bear fruit, requires, on the one hand, safeguarding its authentic purity and integrity and, on the other, presenting it according to the particular experience of each people and culture.”

“These two terms, ‘inculturation’ and ‘sinicization,’ refer to each other without confusion and without opposition,” Parolin said in 2019.

 One Chinese bishop, Bishop John Fang Xingyao of Linyi in the province of Shandong, said in November of 2019 that “[l]ove for the homeland must be greater than the love for the Church and the law of the country is above canon law.”

The Chinese Communist Party’s policy of “Sinicization” of religion “is not what we mean by inculturation, it is the religion of the Communist Party,” Zen wrote Tuesday, where “the first divinity is the country, the party, the party leader.”

“How can the Most Eminent say that all this has nothing to do with the agreement? Can life be cut into pieces?” Zen asked. 

The cardinal also accused Cardinal Parolin of manipulating Pope Francis on the agreement. 

“I will be asked: Do you say that Parolin manipulates the Holy Father? Yes, I don’t know why the Pope allows himself to be manipulated, but I have evidence to believe so and this makes it even less painful and repugnant to criticize the Holy See,” he said. 

Cardinal Zen told CNA last month that the Church’s silence on the mass detention and abuses of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, supposedly as a result of negotiations to renew the 2018 agreement, “will damage the work of evangelization” there in the future. 

Pope Francis has remained silent on what some human rights groups have called “genocide” of Uyghurs in China’s northwest.

“The resounding silence will damage the work of evangelization,” Zen told CNA in an interview last month. 

“Tomorrow when people will gather to plan the new China, the Catholic Church may not be welcome.”

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