Cardinal Joseph Zen had a private audience with Pope Francis on 6 January, after he had attended the funeral of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. The Hong Kong authorities had temporarily released his passport for five days to allow him to travel to Rome.
The 90-year-old cardinal and Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong, who was arrested last year under the city’s national security law over a fund helping pro-democracy protesters, arrived in St Peter’s Square dressed in red and walking with a cane to concelebrate the funeral Mass on 5 January.
He was created a cardinal by the late Pope Emeritus in 2006.
On the morning of funeral he was photographed inside St Peter’s at Benedict XVI’s closed coffin and greeting Pope Francis in front of Michelangelo’s Pietà.
The cardinal, who has criticised the Vatican’s dealings with China, then received a private audience with Pope Francis the following day in the Vatican’s Santa Marta guesthouse.
“It was wonderful. He was so very warm,” he said afterwards. He told Pope Francis about his ministry to prisoners in Hong Kong jails.
Cardinal Zen has accused the Vatican in recent years of “selling out” China's underground Catholic community after Pope Francis sought to improve ties with Beijing.
Their last reported private audience was in 2018. In that year the Vatican reached a secretive deal with Beijing, criticised by Cardinal Zen, allowing China to choose bishops on the mainland and then have Rome approve them. It was renewed last year.
Cardinal Zen has written that Benedict XVI took “extraordinary” actions to support the Church in China, despite many setbacks. He praised Benedict’s 2007 letter to China, but reflected “despite his great efforts, Pope Benedict failed to improve the situation of the Church in China; he could not accept just any compromise.”
Cardinal Zen visited the tomb of Benedict XVI in the crypt of St Peter’s Basilica, before leaving Rome.
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