Card. Joseph Zen
Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, a Salesian, was born in Shanghai in 1932 and fled to Hong Kong in 1948 as the Communists took power. Ordained a priest in 1961 and a doctor of philosophy from Rome in 1964, he spent 1989 to 1996 teaching in the government-permitted seminaries of mainland China, coming to know firsthand the sufferings of the persecuted faithful. He was made Bishop of Hong Kong in 2002 and created a cardinal by Benedict XVI in 2006.
He is the most prominent voice of resistance to the Holy See's diplomatic accord with Beijing, which he regards as a betrayal of the underground Church, and a determined defender of the Traditional Latin Mass against the restrictions of Traditionis Custodes. Arrested in 2022 under Hong Kong's National Security Law over his trusteeship of a humanitarian fund, he was convicted only on a registration technicality. At 94 he remains unsilenced - denouncing the manipulation of the Synod on Synodality at the January 2026 consistory and appealing to Pope Leo XIV to intervene in the case of the Society of St. Pius X.
- Taught in the seminaries of mainland China (1989-1996), forming priests under Communist surveillance
- Bishop of Hong Kong (2002-2009); created a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006
- Foremost critic of the 2018 Vatican-China Agreement on the appointment of bishops
- Defender of the Traditional Latin Mass and outspoken critic of Traditionis Custodes (2021)
- Arrested under Hong Kong's National Security Law (2022); convicted on a fund-registration technicality
- At the January 2026 consistory, condemned the manipulation of the Synod on Synodality as 'an insult to the dignity of the bishops'