At 94, Cardinal Joseph Zen wages a last great battle—against Beijing’s control, Vatican diplomacy, and what he calls a manipulated synodality.
Newsroom (13/01/2026 Gaudium Press ) In a Hong Kong courtroom three years ago, 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun leaned heavily on his cane, his slight frame wrapped in a black clerical robe and marked by the stark white of his collar. He stood accused of failing to register a humanitarian fund created to support protesters arrested during the 2019 pro-democracy movement, a technical charge that could not disguise the political contest at its core. The nonagenarian bishop emeritus, long a symbol of moral resistance in Hong Kong, met the proceedings with the same defiant calm that has characterized his entire public life.
Months later, in a Hong Kong parish, he leaned on a different kind of support: a golden monstrance bearing the Eucharist at a Latin Mass that itself had become a lightning rod in internal Catholic debates. In that gesture—part liturgy, part statement—Zen again cast himself as a quiet rebel, rooted in tradition yet unafraid to clash with both government power and ecclesial authority. Now 94, his voice has grown sharper still, turned not only toward Beijing and Hong Kong officials but toward Rome’s grand experiment in synodality, which he has branded an “ironclad manipulation” and a near “blasphemous” distortion of the Holy Spirit’s work.
Roots in War and Revolution
Zen’s story begins in mainland China, where he was born in Shanghai in 1932, one year after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria that helped set Asia on the path to world war. His childhood unfolded against the backdrop of occupation, civil conflict, and revolutionary ideology that viewed the Catholic Church as a counterrevolutionary threat. When Mao Zedong’s Communist regime consolidated power, Zen’s Catholic family—like many others—faced mounting persecution as religious institutions were branded enemies of the new state.
In 1948, two years after Hong Kong was raised from apostolic vicariate to full Catholic diocese under British rule, Zen’s family fled Shanghai for the bustling colonial outpost. The move spared them the full brunt of Maoist repression but left loved ones behind in a mainland where churches were closed, clergy were imprisoned or “reeducated,” and believers were pressured to sever ties with Rome. That personal rupture with China’s new order would shape his view of the Communist regime for the rest of his life.
A Salesian Priest Formed for the Poor
In Hong Kong, Zen enrolled in a Catholic school run by the Salesians of Don Bosco, a congregation founded in the nineteenth century to serve poor boys and marginalized youth. The Salesian emphasis on education, discipline, and pastoral closeness to the vulnerable left a lasting imprint. Zen entered the order, was ordained a priest in 1961, and three years later completed a doctorate at the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome, acquiring both academic rigor and global perspective.
Returning to Hong Kong, he rose within the local Salesian community, becoming its leader in 1978. His daily work remained stubbornly concrete: parish ministry, teaching, and accompaniment of ordinary Catholics on the margins of a rapidly changing city. Yet he followed events on the mainland closely, especially the fate of the underground church that remained loyal to the pope despite tightening state oversight through the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), created by the regime to control doctrine, appointments, and worship.
The turning point came in 1989, when Chinese soldiers opened fire on students and citizens gathered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Zen watched the crackdown with horror, but instead of public denunciation he chose, at first, a strategy of presence. In the early 1990s, he secured official permission to spend roughly half of each year teaching in government-run Catholic seminaries in mainland China, where the state had only recently reopened religious institutions shuttered during the Cultural Revolution.
He later described those years as paradoxical. The seminaries were “full of students” eager for serious formation, and he had broad freedom to teach theology as he saw fit. Yet he also recognized the hard limits of that space. Government officials occupied half of the seminaries’ boards of governors and delivered regular lectures on Marxism; state security services infiltrated the student body; even the head of the CCPA could not telephone the Vatican freely. “In China, everything is fake,” Zen concluded, a blunt indictment of a system that allowed religious practice only within strict ideological boundaries.
A Bishop in a City of Promises
In 1996, as his time in China drew to a close, Zen was appointed auxiliary bishop of Hong Kong by Pope John Paul II. The following year, Britain handed the territory back to China under a framework promising “one country, two systems” for at least fifty years—an arrangement meant to preserve Hong Kong’s capitalist economy, independent courts, and civil liberties while integrating it into the People’s Republic. The city, with its vibrant Catholic community and strategic position, would soon become a laboratory for how faith and freedom might coexist under Beijing’s shadow.
Zen became bishop of Hong Kong in 2002, inheriting a flock anxious about the future. Almost immediately he emerged as a leading critic of proposed “national security” legislation aimed at punishing so-called subversion and sedition. Civil society groups feared the laws would be used to crush dissent, and Zen joined public protests, arguing that such measures threatened both human rights and the church’s mission. His voice carried particular weight because he had seen firsthand how similar language in mainland law had been used to jail Christians and close churches.
Over the next several years, the bishop became a familiar presence at pro-democracy events. He participated in prayer services linked to the annual July 1 march commemorating the handover and protesting erosion of promised freedoms. When the World Trade Organization met in Hong Kong in 2005, Zen expressed solidarity with activists who warned that trade policies were harming small farmers and widening global inequality. His episcopal ministry increasingly fused traditional pastoral care with public advocacy, casting him as both shepherd and social prophet.
In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI elevated him to the College of Cardinals, giving him greater visibility and a broader platform. Three years later, Zen resigned as diocesan bishop, as required by canon law, but the retirement only intensified his activism. Unburdened by day-to-day governance, he plunged deeper into controversies at the intersection of politics, education, and ecclesial diplomacy.
Hunger Strikes and Umbrellas
One of his most dramatic acts came in 2011, when Hong Kong authorities moved to appoint government-aligned managers to the boards of Catholic schools. To Zen, the policy threatened the church’s ability to form students in the faith and opened the door to ideological control. He responded with a three-day hunger strike, consuming only water and the Eucharist, a gesture that fused spiritual sacrifice with political protest. He accused the government of trying to “brainwash” students into supporting the Communist Party, but, wary of endangering church institutions, he urged other Catholics not to join him in civil disobedience on this issue.
The government did not relent, and Zen effectively lost the battle over school governance. Yet his demonstration deepened his moral stature among many Hong Kong residents, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, who saw in him a rare figure willing to stake his body on principle. That stature re-emerged in 2014, when mass protests—later dubbed the Umbrella Movement—erupted over Beijing’s insistence on vetting candidates for Hong Kong’s chief executive, despite earlier promises of eventual universal suffrage.
As students and activists occupied central districts, police deployed tear gas and arrests to clear the streets. Some churches opened their doors to provide shelter, bathrooms, and prayer. Zen joined prayer gatherings and, when movement leaders decided to surrender to authorities in a bid to reduce tensions, he walked beside them to the police station. All were released, but the image of the elderly cardinal turning himself in alongside the youth galvanized public imagination.
Two years later, he celebrated Mass on the sidewalk outside government headquarters to mark the second anniversary of the Umbrella Movement’s clearance. Demonstrators lined up for “selfies” with him, an unusual blend of liturgy and social media age celebrity that captured his populist appeal. While officials accused churches of “harboring thugs,” individual guards and officers sometimes treated him with deference; on one prison visit, a guard relinquished his seat on the bus so the octogenarian cleric could sit.
“If you are faithful to your principles, even the enemy has some respect for you,” Zen reflected. “But once you submit to their demands, you are a slave.”
Rome, Beijing, and a “Blatantly Evil” Deal
Zen’s battles did not stop at Hong Kong’s borders. For decades, relations between China and the Holy See were frozen: Beijing severed diplomatic ties in 1951, and in 1957 the government created the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association to manage a state-recognized church that operated in tension—and often open conflict—with underground communities loyal to Rome. Against this history, the 2018 provisional agreement between the Vatican and China on the joint appointment of bishops was widely hailed by some as a diplomatic breakthrough.
Zen saw it differently. He lambasted the accord as “blatantly evil” and “immoral,” arguing that it effectively legitimized a “schismatic Church” while leaving underground Catholics more vulnerable to persecution. Open Doors, an organization tracking Christian persecution, ranks China among the countries where it is hardest to be a Christian, and Zen insisted that Catholics, because of their ties to the Vatican, often face even harsher pressure than Protestants. The deal, renewed in 2020, 2022, and again in 2024, became a recurring point of contention between the retired cardinal and Vatican diplomats.
While Zen’s public criticisms often focused on Pope Francis’s Secretariat of State—particularly Cardinal Pietro Parolin, whom he accused of prioritizing diplomacy over faith and even engaging in “willful lies”—he maintained a more nuanced personal relationship with Francis himself. In his 2019 book, For Love of My People I Will Not Remain Silent, he recounted how the pope once greeted him in St. Peter’s Square by miming a slingshot, casting Zen as a modern-day David confronting Goliath. At another moment, Francis jokingly reminded the Salesian cardinal of his threefold vow of devotion—to the Eucharist, the Virgin Mary, and the pope—exhorting him, “Exactly—devotion to the pope! Don’t forget that!”
Still, Zen did not temper his warnings. As China and the Holy See renewed their agreements, he insisted that Communist power was not eternal and that the church should not compromise its witness by aligning too closely with the regime. “If today they go along with the regime,” he wrote, “tomorrow our Church will not be welcome for the rebuilding of the new China.”
The 612 Fund and a Courtroom Reckoning
The tension between spiritual conviction and political cost reached a new peak in 2019, when Hong Kong was rocked by massive protests against a proposed law allowing extradition of residents to mainland courts. Fearing erosion of judicial independence and exposure to opaque mainland trials, hundreds of thousands took to the streets over months. In response to the growing number of arrests, Zen and four other prominent figures helped establish the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, which provided financial assistance for legal fees and medical care to protesters facing prosecution.
Authorities eventually charged the cardinal and his co-trustees with failing to properly register the fund as a society, a lesser offense than the earlier, more ominous accusations of “collusion with foreign forces” but still a serious signal of the new legal climate. In the ensuing trial, Zen sat in the dock, head bowed, listening through a headset as lawyers debated the technicalities of registration and compliance.
The court found him guilty and imposed a modest fine, the equivalent of roughly $512, while confiscating his passport—a symbolic restraint on a man whose influence had long crossed borders. Standing outside the courtroom, Zen reframed the moment in stark moral terms. “In this moment, there are the persecutor and the persecuted, the strong oppressors and the weak, suffering people,” he said. “We have to be on the side of the weak.”
Defender of Tradition, Critic of Reform
Though often praised as a democratic icon in Hong Kong, Zen has never fit comfortably into liberal Catholic narratives. On doctrinal and liturgical questions he is firmly conservative. He strongly criticized Pope Francis’ restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass, seeing them as an unfair curtailment of a venerable form of worship. He also raised concerns about pastoral approaches to same-sex couples, warning that ill-defined blessings could blur doctrinal teaching on marriage and sexuality.
In recent years, his deepest unease has centered on the global Synod on Synodality, launched under Francis to foster a more participatory, listening church. Zen worries that behind the language of “walking together” lies an ambiguity that could weaken the apostolic hierarchy and relativize long-settled teaching. In earlier essays, he cautioned against an undefined “democracy of the baptized,” asking pointedly: “Which baptized people? Do they at least go to church regularly? Do they draw faith from the Bible and strength from the sacraments?” If such a vision were “legitimized,” he warned, it could “change everything, the doctrine of faith and the discipline of moral life.”
For Zen, genuine synods are part of the church’s tradition, but they must remain rooted in apostolic teaching and guided by ordained ministers who lead the faithful toward “the heavenly Jerusalem.” What troubles him is not consultation itself but what he sees as attempts to reimagine the church’s structure in democratic terms, treating all baptized voices as interchangeable in questions of doctrine and governance. That trajectory, he argues, risks repeating the fractures of the Protestant Reformation, which he says cost Catholics a “large part” of the church.
“Ironclad Manipulation” and “Almost Blasphemous” Appeals
In early January 2026, at an extraordinary consistory of cardinals in Rome, Zen’s concerns erupted into one of his most forceful interventions yet. Addressing Pope Leo XIV and roughly 170 members of the College of Cardinals, the 93‑year‑old launched a blistering critique of what he called “Bergoglian synodality,” the model associated with Pope Francis and continued under his successor. According to reports, Zen denounced the entire synodal process as an “ironclad manipulation” and “an insult to the dignity of the bishops,” arguing that the structure and methods used effectively pre‑determined outcomes and stripped bishops of real deliberative freedom.
He was particularly scathing about the constant invocation of the Holy Spirit during synodal gatherings. Presenting the synod as the privileged place where the Spirit speaks through the whole People of God, he argued, risked implying that the Spirit could contradict the very tradition he had inspired over two millennia. To Zen, this suggestion was “ridiculous and almost blasphemous,” because it cast the Spirit as a kind of revolutionary force overturning past teaching rather than deepening the church’s understanding of it.
Zen questioned whether any pope could credibly claim to have “listened to the entire People of God,” and whether the lay participants in synodal assemblies truly represented that people in any measurable sense. He asked whether bishops had been allowed to exercise genuine discernment—which, in his view, requires argument, disputation, and judgment—or whether the process had instead channeled them toward pre‑set conclusions. The style of “conversation in the Spirit” promoted at synodal sessions, he contended elsewhere, risked becoming more psychological and sociological than theological, muting clear debate in favor of controlled consensus.
A central target of his critique was the final synodal document. Zen pointed out what he saw as deep contradictions: the text was described as an act of the magisterium that “commits the Churches,” yet it explicitly refrained from imposing new norms; it called for unity of doctrine and practice, yet allowed wide variation according to local “contexts” and “cultures.” For him, this combination of strong claims and weak prescriptions invites confusion and, ultimately, fragmentation—especially if local churches begin “experimenting” with new forms of ministry and governance under a vague mandate.
He also voiced ecumenical concerns. Orthodox churches, he insisted, would “never accept” this form of synodality, because in their tradition synods mean bishops exercising real authority together. By contrast, he argued, the current model, by giving non‑bishops formal roles in synodal voting and reconfiguring the Synod of Bishops established by Paul VI, effectively hollows out the episcopal structure while still trading on the word “synod.” In that sense, he said, recent reforms have “exploited” the term synodality, using it to advance a paradigm that redefines the church’s very self‑understanding.
A Church at a Crossroads
Zen’s ferocious rhetoric has drawn criticism from those who see the synodal process as a necessary response to abuse crises, secularization, and the breakdown of trust in institutions. Some argue that his own experience of Communist totalitarianism makes him instinctively suspicious of any process that emphasizes managed consensus, consultation, or what he perceives as ideological scripting. Others note that his choice of words—“ironclad manipulation,” “almost blasphemous”—risks deepening polarizations within a church already struggling to hold together diverse theological and cultural currents.
Yet for his supporters, especially among Catholics wary of rapid change, Zen has become a rare voice of uncompromising clarity. They view him as a watchdog guarding the boundaries of doctrine, a man who has seen both the violence of political tyranny and the subtle dangers of ecclesial vagueness. His criticisms of synodality, they say, spring from the same instinct that led him to accompany students in Hong Kong’s streets and seminarians in mainland China: a conviction that truth and freedom require structures that are honest, transparent, and anchored in something more solid than passing fashion.
Zen himself frames the conflict in starkly eschatological terms. Humans are sinners, he acknowledges, and reform is therefore always needed. But reform that loses sight of the apostolic priesthood or treats revealed doctrine as provisional becomes, in his view, not renewal but rupture. For a church already wounded by division, he believes, such rupture could be fatal.
The Long View of a Quiet Rebel
Approaching his mid‑nineties, Cardinal Joseph Zen walks more slowly, his cane a constant companion. But his voice has grown only more insistent. Whether condemning Beijing’s tightening grip on Hong Kong, denouncing the Vatican’s fragile bargain with China, or warning against what he sees as synodality’s engineered outcomes, he refuses to retreat into the comfortable quiet of retirement.
“Communist power is not eternal,” he wrote in 2019, warning church leaders not to trade away their credibility for temporary accommodation. That same long view now shapes his critique of synodality and internal church reforms. Processes pass, popes die, documents are revised; what matters, in his reckoning, is whether the church will still be recognizable to those who have handed on the faith across centuries of persecution and renewal.
In the courtroom, in the streets, and now in the halls of the Vatican, Zen continues to cast his lot with those he calls the weak—protesters facing trial, underground Catholics under pressure, bishops who, he believes, are being sidelined by fashionable ecclesial experiments. For him, integrity remains the measure of a life well lived. “The purpose of life,” he has said, “is to be a person of integrity, justice, and kindness.” In the twilight of his years, he appears determined to hold that line, even if it pits him against the very institutions he has spent a lifetime serving.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Christianity Today
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