As the Chinese Communist Party came to grips with China’s new sovereignty over the former British colony, it tried to recast Hong Kong in the image of Shanghai or Beijing. Civil rights written into Hong Kong’s Basic Law were disappearing under the paranoia of anti-subversion laws.
It was Shanghai-born Zen, cardinal of Hong Kong, who alerted citizens to what was happening.
Beginning in 2003, Zen called and led annual prayer vigils and marches calling for democracy. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Catholic and non-Catholic, learned to talk back to their government following Zen as he prayed and marched.
Zen did and said all the things Beijing insists must not be done or said. He challenged Chinese leadership to speak openly about what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989. He protested changes to how Hong Kong’s schools would be administered and financed which left the Church no role in guiding Catholic schools. He called China’s restrictions on the Falun Gong movement religious persecution. He has criticized China’s unilateral promotion of bishops loyal to the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and defended the rights of the underground Church.
Zen’s courage and unerring instinct for democracy make him the perfect choice for a speaker at Convivium magazine’s second annual dinner.
“Political freedom as well as religious freedom — we’re seeing more and more the importance of defending faith and defending religious liberty as something that’s coming to the fore,” said Convivium staffer Julia Nethersole. “This message of religious freedom is something that Cardinal Zen has promoted and that China, a predominantly atheistic state, has suppressed. That’s been a hallmark of his career.”
Zen retired as archbishop of Hong Kong in 2009. Though he had once expressed the desire to resume teaching in the seminaries of mainland China, as he had in the 1970s and ’80s, he now blogs against Beijing’s interference in Chinese Catholic affairs from Hong Kong.
With Zen as the keynote speaker, a special guest at the dinner will be Canada’s Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.
Money from the dinner at the Le Parc Banquet Hall in Thornhill will support Convivium, a magazine published six times per year by Cardus, a Christian think tank. Under the motto “Faith in our common life,” the magazine is edited by Catholic Register columnist Fr. Raymond D’Souza.
The evening begins at 5:30 p.m. with Mass at St. Agnes Kouying Tsao Catholic Church, 2130 Roddick Rd. in Markham. For tickets call (905) 528-8866 (ext. 29).