Freedom of speech, assembly and the press are gone in Hong Kong, and there’s good reason to fear religious liberty will be the next target.
That was the warning from Monsignor Javier Herrera-Corona, the Vatican’s unofficial envoy in Hong Kong, as he prepared to leave the city this spring after six years. Reuters reports that in four private meetings he encouraged some 50 Catholic missions in the city to safeguard their property, files and funds in anticipation of more mainland Chinese control.
“Change is coming, and you’d better be prepared,” Monsignor Herrera-Corona warned the missionaries, according to Reuters, which quoted an attendee as summarizing the monsignor’s message: “Hong Kong is not the great Catholic beachhead it was.”
Hong Kong’s Basic Law guarantees freedom of religion, and diverse faiths have flourished there. The city has also long been a haven for mainland Christians, who traveled to Hong Kong to study. Father Laszlo Ladany, a Hungarian Jesuit based in Hong Kong, famously reported on Chinese political and legal developments during the Mao Zedong era. Yet China has violated other liberties it swore to respect under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, and there’s no reason to believe religious freedom will be an exception.