Cardinal Muller to the Pope: ‘Cardinal Zen will be tried by China, the Vatican should not sacrifice him to reasons of state’
On the just-concluded Consistory with almost all the world’s cardinals – an event that has not happened since 2014 – the Vatican’s silence on the fate of Hong Kong’s Cardinal Emeritus Joseph Zen ze-Kiun from China, who is absent from Rome because he is under house arrest for raising his voice against Beijing by defending human rights both in Hong Kong and in China, weighed like a boulder. “Next month there will be an unfair trial. No one has raised the very serious issue of our Brother, Cardinal Zen. Not by the Dean, Cardinal Re, nor by the Secretary of State, Parolin, nor by the Pope. There has been no document of solidarity, no prayer initiative for him’. Speaking in an interview with Il Messaggero is Cardinal Gerhard Muller, renowned theologian and former Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith, editor of Joseph Ratzinger’s opera omnia.
Do you think that Zen has been abandoned to his fate because he is an unwieldy character, given that he defends Chinese Catholics belonging to the clandestine Church not aligned with the Communist Party, or is there something else going on?
“I hope he will not be abandoned. The extraordinary Consistory would have been an opportunity to declare full solidarity with Zen on behalf of all the Cardinals of the College”.
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