Rights groups have asked communist Vietnam to release all prisoners of conscience as a way to save them from the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

On April 4, Vietnam-based Human Rights Defenders said the pandemic is spreading across Vietnam and the number of infections may surge if the government fails to apply proper measures or demand all citizens strictly obey preventive measures.

The group, which works to systematically report and document serious human rights violations in the country, said prisoners of conscience and people being held at prison camps and temporary detention centres are most vulnerable to Covid-19 infection.

China has relaxed a crack-down on unofficial religious groups amid the intense fight against Covid-19, but some Christian leaders feel the freedom could be short-lived.

Since this year’s Chinese New Year, which fell on Jan. 25, the harassment of under-ground Christians has eased as most officials have been engaged in fighting the raging pandemic, said Father Paul, a priest of the underground church in Yunnan province.

The crackdown on unapproved churches continued unabated even after September 2018 when the Vatican and China signed an agreement on the appointment of bishops.

The crackdown aimed to force the Catholic Church loyal to the Vatican, known as the under-ground church, to become part of the state-approved official church, Christian leaders said.

In the past two years, authorities have not allowed Christian groups to post customary spring messages with Christian blessings or prayers on the entrances of their churches or houses, said Father Paul.

“If Catholics post such messages on churches or houses, governmental agents will tear them off,” the priest said.

However, during this new year, “local Catholics posted the spring couplets and they were not torn off. Maybe the officials were busy fighting the epidemic,” Father Paul said.

The Covid-19 pandemic was first reported in Wuhan city in Hubei province in late December. By mid-January, the entire Chinese bureaucracy was busy fighting the disease that has officially killed some 3,300 people in China.

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith has called for an international probe into the cause of the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking in a televised Mass on March 15, the archbishop of Colombo said powerful countries cannot be allowed to play with the lives of the innocent public. He said that experimenting with nature had resulted in the coronavirus.

“We know that in several areas of the world researchers of all types for various reasons are engaging in research to destroy human life and nature. Some of these viruses are the products of aimless experiments,” said Cardinal Ranjith.

“This kind of research is done not by people in poor countries but in laboratories in rich countries. Producing such things is a very serious crime for mankind.

“I ask the Lord to reveal who made these poisonous seeds. The United Nations or international organizations must find out who is behind these incidents and punish them. Such research should be banned.”

The cardinal’s comments came as the Sri Lankan Church cancelled Masses and other services in all parishes because of a rapid rise of coronavirus cases in the country.

It announced on March 15 that it is cancelling all church services until the end of the month. The decision came in the middle of the Lenten season that features common gatherings such as the Way of the Cross, Lenten pilgrimages, group meditation, healing services and group prayer services.

In a press briefing, Cardinal Ranjith requested all political parties to join together to fight Covid-19 while asking people not to gather extra goods unnecessarily.

The number of infections in Sri Lanka has risen to 18. Most of the patients had arrived from Italy recently.

Emanuel Marianus Tapu, 29, usually goes to church to attend Sunday Mass. However, for the last two Sundays he has been unable to do so because Mass and other church activities have been suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic. Luckily, though, churches have turned to the internet and are streaming daily and Sunday Masses.

Last Sunday, at his home in the Jakarta suburb of Parung Panjang, he placed a lit candle and a cross next to his laptop and followed a livestreamed Mass from Jakarta Cathedral.

“Although it was through YouTube, I still felt I was attending a normal Mass. I feel the need to maintain my spiritual life in the midst of this crisis,” the 29-year-old devout Catholic told UCA News.

Cardinal Joseph Zen publish-ed Saturday a blog post accusing the Vatican’s secretary of state of manipulating Pope Francis, and continuing his ongoing criticism of the Holy See’s approach to the Catholic Church in China.

“My personal impression is that [Cardinal Pietro] Parolin manipulates the Pope, at least in things regarding the Church in China,” Zen, the emeritus bishop of Hong Kong, wrote in a post published on his personal blog.

The post “Supplement to my answer to Cardinal G.B. Re,” was dated March 10, although it was actually published March 21. It seemed to be an addendum to a March 3 open letter Zen wrote to Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re.

Zen’s March 21 and March 3 letters came in response to a Feb. 26 letter from Re, dean of the Church’s College of Cardinals, to the Church’s cardinals, which claimed that that the China-Vatican deal represents the minds of St. John Paul II and of Benedict XVI, and that Zen’s opposition to the deal is misguided.

Even before it was signed, Zen has been a zealous critic of the Vatican’s 2018 provisional agreement with the People’s Republic of China. He says the agreement, which has not been publicly released, concedes a deliberative role to the Chinese government in the selection of bishops, and puts at risk of persecution many of the Catholics in China.

Zen’s more recent post claimed that while he has been critical of Re over the China deal, “The Problem is not between me and Re. The problem is with Cardinal Parolin.”

“It’s difficult to understand how this man has become so powerful to dominate the whole Roman Curia. He could dismiss the Commission for Church in China without a word and nobody stood up to protest against such impoliteness.”

Vietnam’s communist government has thanked Christians, including the Catholic hierarchy, for taking preventive steps to check the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Head of religious affairs Vu Chien Thang used a March 17 statement to extend Easter greeting to all Catholics, Protestants and their leaders, Vietnam News Agency reported.

“We thank the Episcopal Council and bishops of dioceses for proactively implementing the instructions of the government and all-level administrations in disease control,” Thang wrote.

The collective efforts put for-ward by religious organizations, including the Catholic and Protestant churches, have helped Vietnam effectively control the outbreak, winning kudos from the international community, he said. Although Vietnam remains geographically and culturally close to China, the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak, it has only 75 confirmed cases with zero deaths, according to its health ministry. Thang regretted his inability to visit Christian leaders personally and exchange Easter greetings because of the virus restrictions in place.

Indonesian Catholics have called on the Vatican to re-schedule Pope Francis’ visit to Indonesia after it was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Though the Vatican never confirmed the pope would be visiting Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and Papua New Guinea this September, diplomatic sources had said the visit was planned. However, officials have now said that due to the Covid-19 pandemic the visit has been called off.

“The cancellation is understandable because now the whole world is fighting Covid-19 and it will remain a serious threat over the next few months,” Father Antonius Benny Susetyo, a member of a presidential unit promoting communal tolerance, told UCA News on March 15.

However, the former executive secretary of the bishops’ interfaith committee hoped the Vatican would reschedule the pope’s visit for next year “because his visit is very important for Indonesia.”

“His visit will have a positive impact on Indonesia, particularly in strengthening interreligious dialogue,” he said.

Hermawi Fransiskus Taslim, a Catholic lay leader, expressed a similar view.

A Filipina Benedictine nun has succumbed to coronavirus in Spain, her congregation reported on March 28.

Sr Maria Gratia Balagot, who was the superior of their community in India, was only visiting Spain to renew her visa when she was infected with Covid-19. “And while there, (she) contracted the virus,” the US-based Missionary Benedictine Sisters – Norfolk Priory said in a Facebook post. “Please pray for her and for her community in India and for the whole congregation during this difficult time,” the post reads. Sr Balagot, who is originally from Aringay, La Union, died at the age of 71. She has been a missionary in India since 2016.

The newly-appointed Dean of the College of Cardinals purportedly sent a letter to cardinals on February 26 claiming that the China-Vatican deal deal represents the minds of St John Paul II and of Benedict XVI, and that Cardinal Zen is mistaken in his opposition to the deal.

An Italian text of the letter from Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, dated on Feb. 26, was published on Feb. 29 by La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana.

“I desire first of all to emphasize that, in their approach to the situation of the Catholic Church in China, there is a profound symphony of the thought and of the action of the last three Pontificates, which — out of respect for the truth — have favoured dialogue between the two parties and not contrariety,” Cardinal Re wrote.

“Cardinal Zen has affirmed several times that it would be better to have no Accord then than a ‘bad Accord.’ The three last Popes did not share this position and supported and accompanied the drafting of the Accord that, at the present moment, seemed to be the only one possible,” he stated.

Cardinal Joseph Zen Zekiun, Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong, has been an outspoken opponent of the 2018 agreement between the Vatican and the People’s Republic of China regarding episcopal appointments. The Church in mainland China has been divided for some 60 years between the underground Church, which is persecuted and whose episcopal appointments are frequently not acknowledged by Chinese authorities, and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, a government-sanctioned organization.