As Rome stays silent, Trump defends Jimmy Lai

OPINION:

Last week, Jimmy Lai, the pro‑democracy activist and former Hong Kong media magnate, was handed a 20‑year prison sentence, the harshest yet imposed under China’s national security law. It is a law designed to extinguish dissent.

An elderly Catholic convert and one of the most recognizable symbols of resistance to Beijing’s tightening authoritarian grip, Mr. Lai has already spent five long years in a prison cell awaiting sentencing. For a man of his age, this sentence is, in truth, a life sentence. That is likely the goal of the ruthless regime determined to silence him forever.

Jimmy Lai’s case has become a global test of whether powerful leaders will defend human dignity when it comes at a political cost. Sadly, most of them have remained silent, including Pope Leo XIV, whose reluctance to speak publicly about this has been especially painful for faithful Catholics.

While Mr. Lai sits in prison as a Catholic martyr for religious freedom and free expression, the Vatican has said nothing. The Holy See has offered no public demand for Mr. Lai’s release, no moral rebuke of Beijing’s crackdown, and no acknowledgment of the suffering of Hong Kong’s Catholics.

Silent in the face of the communist regime’s ruthlessness, Pope Leo XIV has nevertheless felt free to criticize the Trump administration’s immigration and deportation policies, telling reporters: “I think we have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have. If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts, there’s a system of justice.”

Pope Leo XIV has also been quite vocal in addressing geopolitical issues far removed from the church’s own persecuted Catholics. In a strange display of symbolism, one that many in the media interpreted as a criticism of Mr. Trump and his climate policies, the pope blessed a block of melting ice to challenge climate change deniers and urge political leaders to act to reverse global warming.

Today, the most vocal champion of Mr. Lai’s freedom is the president of the United States. Mr. Trump has made the plight of Jimmy Lai a priority in his broader confrontation with the Chinese Communist Party. His administration has repeatedly raised Mr. Lai’s case through diplomatic channels, publicly condemned the sham national security charges and, most recently, signaled that Mr. Lai’s imprisonment is a central obstacle to any normalization of U.S.-China relations.

Supporters argue that Mr. Trump is using the full weight of American power to pressure Beijing.

The contrast is impossible to ignore. On one side sits a secular political leader willing to confront Beijing directly. On the other is the spiritual leader of 1.3 billion Catholics, who appears unwilling to risk even mild displeasure from the Chinese government.

Supporters of the Vatican’s silent approach often claim that “quiet diplomacy” is more effective, but after years of silence, Jimmy Lai remains behind bars, his health continuing to deteriorate.

At this point, quiet diplomacy has become abdication. The Vatican’s secret agreement with Beijing, which has enabled the suppression of underground Catholic communities, seems to have silenced the Holy See’s moral voice. The church — which once stood with dissidents in Poland, Cuba and the Soviet bloc — now refuses to speak out publicly for one of its own.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has done what many expected the Vatican to do first: treat Jimmy Lai not as a bargaining chip but as a man whose dignity demands public defense. If moral leadership means anything, then it must mean standing with the persecuted when it is inconvenient or politically risky.

Jimmy Lai deserves that kind of courage. The Vatican’s strategy of silence and appeasement toward Beijing has clearly failed in the past, and it is unmistakably failing now.

History will remember who spoke for Jimmy Lai and who looked away. It will remember that the most forceful advocate for him has been a secular President Trump, while the Vatican chose caution over conscience.

Moral authority is not claimed; it is earned in moments like these. Jimmy Lai deserves a church that stands with him. For now, he finds his defenders in Washington, not Rome.

• Anne Hendershott is a professor of sociology and director of the Veritas Center at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, and the author of “The Politics of Envy” (Crisis Publications).