By 
Jimmy Lai, the human rights advocate and outspoken Catholic who has faced what supporters say has been years of politicized prosecution and conviction in Hong Kong, was sentenced on Feb. 9 to 20 years in prison over what Chinese officials claim were national security violations.
The sentencing comes after Lai’s December conviction under China’s wide-reaching security law, which capped a years-long legal process during which he was found guilty on multiple other charges including fraud and unlawful assembly.
Lai, who was known for years as the publisher of the outspoken pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily, was first arrested in 2020 after alleged violations of Chinese national security policy.
The government has charged him multiple times since then, holding him without bail and sentencing him to lengthy prison stretches, including a 69-month sentence in December 2022 for a fraud conviction.
Lai’s plight has drawn support from around the world, including from high-ranking national leaders such as U.S. President Donald Trump, who has advocated for Lai’s release and who reportedly spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping about the issue in October 2025.
Lai has also drawn support from lawmakers, activists, religious leaders and civil rights leaders around the world. In 2025 he was named an honorary recipient of the Bradley Prize. That award is meant to honor individuals who in part espouse “the ideals of the Western tradition.”
Catholic faith a central part of Lai’s life
Though known for his decades of pro-democracy activism, Lai is also an outspoken Catholic whose faith has continued to sustain him during his imprisonment.
Having converted to Catholicism in 1997, Lai — along with his wife Teresa — raised his son Sebastien and daughter Claire in what Claire described as “a very loving Catholic family.”
Claire told EWTN News in December 2025 that Lai’s incarceration “has just deepened his faith.” He has regularly read the Gospel when permitted by his prison guards, she said, and he “wants to be remembered [as] a faithful servant of Our Lord.”
In February 2024 the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., installed a drawing of the Crucifixion made by Lai. Father Robert Sirico, the founder of the Acton Institute and a supporter and friend of Lai’s, told EWTN News at the time that Lai sees his imprisonment as a way of joining in Christ’s passion on the cross.
In November 2023 a group of 10 Catholic bishops and archbishops called on the Hong Kong government to release Lai, arguing that his “persecution … has gone on long enough.”
“There is no place for such cruelty and oppression in a territory that claims to uphold the rule of law and respect the right to freedom of expression,” the prelates said.
Long known for its greater respect for civil rights and freedom of speech relative to the Chinese mainland, the special administrative region of Hong Kong in recent years has seen a crackdown from the Chinese Communist Party government, which has tightened its hold on the region including with the strict national security law.
In 2022 Father Vincent Woo, a priest of the Diocese of Hong Kong, told EWTN News that religious leaders in the region face “tremendous consequences” if they criticize the government, with many priests or bishops consequently refusing to speak out publicly against the Communist Party.
At a 2025 hearing of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, advocates warned of “severe violations of religious freedom” by the Chinese Communist Party, with the government having reportedly “forcibly eradicated religious elements that are not in line with the CCP’s agenda.”
Claire Lai admitted in January that her father’s “physical body is breaking down” in his protracted confinement, and he has been denied regular access to the Eucharist, she said.
But, she told EWTN News Nightly, he continues to “read the Gospel every morning” and spends his time “praying and drawing the Crucifixion and the Blessed Mother.”
His faith “is what protects his mind and soul,” she said.
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Disgusting. Never trust ChiComs.
The Catholic Church must always be in a posture where it may legitimately criticize the secular powers (as it does the U.S. government). The Church’s silence in China is deafening and a situation where the Communist Party determines who are its bishops is simply unacceptable. Better to have an underground Church confronting the oppression of Caesar.
I truly believe that our current pope and most of his minions have far greater objections to Western nations, and especially to the United States, than they do to Communist China. Their rhetoric confirms this.
I don’t know about the current Pope, but the last one demonstrated acquiescence when he surrendered ecclesial control to Beijing. In 2018, The deal made with the CCP agreed to accept seven bishops who were previously named by Beijing without the pope’s consent.
We’ll see if such an agreement can be reached with the SSPX.
I cannot imagine a more heroic figure than Jimmy Lai. He had it all. Self-made. But he knows where real treasure is. BUY THE TRUTH and SELL IT NOT. That is the price he is willing to pay every day.
That is well put.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, pray for Jimmy Lai.
God bless and sustain Jimmy Lai. May his spirit never faulter and may the Grace of God and the Mystical Body of Christ be his comfort. Even in isolation, may he never be alone.
Total silence, of course, from our apostate Vatican…
The Vatican says nothing critical about the Communists in China.
The USCCB bishops say nothing critical about the Communists in China.
The Vatican and the USCCB bishops are quick to criticize the US government and the West.
The Vatican and USCCB are comprised of feckless wimps – sissy men. That’s why it’s a waste of time to listen to anything that comes from the mouths of Vatican officials and the USCCB bishops.
The Pope and the Vatican do not criticize red (“socialists” and communists) and green regimes (notice the silence on the thousands massacred in Iran). This Pope is ready to criticize Western nations that defend their borders (though He himself in his state punishes heavily all illegals who enter) or Western values against the reds. “Pharisees and scribes, Hypocrites!”