To totalitarian regimes, suppression of the opposition, in often violent ways, has long been a key to staying in power.

A Vatican meeting between Pope Francis and Cuban President and First Secretary Miguel Díaz-Canel on June 20 drew a small protest at the Via della Conciliazione (Road of the Conciliation), the boulevard leading to St. Peter’s Square.

The United States' chief advocate for religious freedom expressed his "disappointment" in the Vatican over its provisional agreement with China on the appointment of bishops in the country.

After only two days, the West Kowloon Magistrates' Court adjourned the trial of Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, 90, and four co-defendants, until Oct. 26.

As the October deadline approaches for the extension of the Vatican's agreement with the Chinese government, the newly appointed editor of the news agency of the Dicastery for Evangelization said the deal has been instrumental in allowing Catholics to practice their faith openly and in communion with the church.

Two state-sponsored church bodies in China have elected new leaders, who promised to invigorate the Catholic faithful pastorally in line with the socialist principles of the Chinese Communist Party.

Edmonton-based Cuban Catholics Eickerman Campos and Yanet Rodriguez Herrero said the people of their birth country and fellow emigrants residing in a new homeland are feeling largely disregarded by the global community a year after protests raged in Cuba against the communist authorities. 

The Chinese Communist Party is seeking to expand its apparatus to monitor and curb religious activities in cyberspace through training and deploying hundreds of "auditors" across the country, triggering concerns from rights groups.

In Judeo-Christian terms we speak about the notion of abetting evil. A Catholic doctor will not only refuse to perform euthanasia but will not refer the patient to someone who will. The referral is a form of abetting evil; paving the way for the act to happen.

When the Russian dissident and author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet empire in 1974, he wrote a famous exhortation to his countrymen entitled “Live Not By Lies.” Solzhenitsyn spent years doing hard labour in prison camps, survived and dared to write about his experience in The Gulag Archipelago. Not only did he write his own story, but he gathered and recounted the tragic stories of those who didn’t make it out alive.

“Libertad! Libertad! Libertad!” Since July 11, the Spanish chant of liberty has sounded loud at solidarity rallies throughout Canada, the U.S. and, most fervently, in cities across Cuba as its inhabitants in a rare show of defiance against their government seek emancipation from the authoritarian regime ushered in by Fidel Castro in 1959.

HAVANA -- The Conference of Catholic Religious in Cuba representing men and women religious in the Caribbean nation is supporting the "legitimate and universal right" of Cubans to express grievances with the government in an "orderly and peaceful way in public."

HONG KONG -- The protesters killed in Tiananmen Square in mainland China on June 4, 1989, used to be remembered in Hong Kong with an annual candlelight vigil in the city’s expansive Victoria Park, attended by crowds as big as 130,000, all holding flickering candles.

The recent arrest of a Vatican-approved bishop, priests and seminarians in north-central China came as a shocking development, if not surprising, as religious persecution in the communist-led country has continued to intensify under President Xi Jinping.

HONG KONG -- Authorities in northern China have arrested a Vatican-appointed Catholic bishop, his seven priests and 10 seminarians in what is seen as part of a renewed crackdown on the underground Catholic Church in the communist country.