News Briefs

Jimmy Lai unlikely to receive a fair trial from Hong Kong judges, lawyer says

December 20, 2023 Catholic News Agency 0
Jonathan Price, a member of Jimmy Lai’s international legal team, appears on “EWTN News Nightly” with host Tracy Sabol on Dec. 19, 2023. / Credit: EWTN News Nightly

CNA Staff, Dec 20, 2023 / 11:55 am (CNA).

A lawyer representing embattled Catholic democracy activist Jimmy Lai said the Hong Konger is unlikely to receive a fair trial in the legal system that is now controlled by Chinese Communist Party authorities.

Lai’s trial in Hong Kong began this week. He was originally arrested in August 2020 under that year’s controversial national security law, which was passed by China’s communist-controlled government and sharply curtailed free speech in the region.

Lai has been imprisoned for over 1,000 days under the law. He has been accused of colluding with foreign adversaries and conspiracy to defraud and is facing a possible life sentence.

Jonathan Price, a human rights lawyer with the U.K.-based Doughty Street Chambers, which is representing Lai in international matters, told “EWTN News Nightly” host Tracy Sabol on Tuesday that Hong Kong — long a separate administrative region from the mainland Chinese government — is “now more or less indistinguishable from China.”

“Its legal system has been subverted” by the 2020 law, Price said; that law is controlled by a “politically appointed committee” rather than an impartial judiciary. 

“The judges in Jimmy Lai’s national security law trial … are handpicked judges, licensed, in effect, to try national security law cases because of their political fealty to Beijing,” Price told Sabol. 

“So in those circumstances, it is not how you or I would recognize fair judicial proceedings,” he said. “And you’ve got to remember as well that recently, the Hong Kong director of national security boasted that the national security law has a 100% conviction rate.” 

In “any rule-of-law compliant jurisdiction, that would be a red flag,” Price argued. “It cannot be right that literally everybody accused of a crime is guilty, but that’s how they’ve been operating the national security bill. So I’m afraid we don’t think that he’s likely to receive a fair trial.”

Lai has been vocal in his faith. He was baptized and received into the Church by Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, in 1997. He said in 2020 that his decision to stay in Hong Kong and place himself in danger was informed by his belief in God. 

Price on Tuesday echoed those remarks. He noted that Lai’s faith had “not been made a factor explicitly” in the trial against him. But “no doubt his faith played a part in the conviction with which he pursued his activities,” including pro-democracy activism.

Lai “saw that Chinese authoritarianism would ruin Hong Kong,” Price said. “And he made it his life’s work to try to hold onto the Hong Kong, and the freedoms in Hong Kong, that he loved, and those included the freedom for him to practice his religion.”

“So in many ways, his conviction [meant] that he stayed in Hong Kong when he could have left,” Price said. “He was a man of enormous means and huge international connections” and could easily have left the region to avoid arrest, Price said.

But “he chose to stay, and that is a mark of his conviction, a mark of his faith.”

Lai’s lawyers have asked the court to throw out sedition charges against the Catholic activist. The judges are expected to rule on that request by the end of the week, with the trial itself projected to continue for several months.

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Irish diocese to rely on laity to preside over funerals amid shortage of priests

December 19, 2023 Catholic News Agency 1
St. Macartan’s Cathedral in the Diocese of Clogher, in Northern Ireland. Laypeople will soon preside over funerals in 12 parishes in the diocese due to a shortage of priests. / Credit: JohnArmagh|Wikipedia|CC BY-SA 3.0

CNA Staff, Dec 19, 2023 / 13:30 pm (CNA).

More than 40 laymen and laywomen in the Diocese of Clogher in the north of Ireland will soon begin presiding over funeral liturgies amid a shortage of priests.

A major vocation crisis could result in fewer than 10 active priests in the diocese in less than 20 years, according to the local ordinary, Bishop Larry Duffy.

“Over the past few months, over 40 people from 12 parishes across the diocese have taken part in a formation course to enable them to accompany people and families at the time of bereavement,” Duffy, bishop of Clogher, announced in a Christmas pastoral letter Dec. 16.

Other parishes have indicated a “willingness” to nominate people for a similar course in the spring, he wrote. 

In the letter, he said that the lay ministers would lead the “liturgy of reception of the body at the church and the Rite of Committal at the graveside.”

Duffy said the lay ministers will continue to be trained over the “coming months” and be commissioned to preside over funerals in their parishes. “We are very grateful to all those who have come forward for the formation and training and to the priests of those parishes for their involvement,” he said. Duffy asked for prayer for the new ministers. 

He said that the ministers will be “commissioned publicly to act in the name of the Church” and added that “this is not a lessening of service to families and loved ones at the time of a death but, rather, a strengthening of the local parish commitment to accompany people at such a difficult and sensitive time.”

Duffy announced in a July pastoral letter that the northern Irish diocese has a severe shortage of priests and will be ordaining just one priest in the next seven years. By CNA’s count, the diocese has 72 priests and deacons covering about 40 parishes and 85 churches.

“The figures given to us indicate that if we continue as we are, in less than 20 years there will be fewer than 10 priests covering the 85 churches across the whole diocese — from Bundoran on the Atlantic to Inniskeen and Killanny near Dundalk,” he said.

A shortage of priests

“The truth is that we cannot continue to operate and provide pastoral ministry across our diocese in the same way as we do now or as we did in the past,” Duffy said in July. He said that there would be fewer Masses as a result of the lack of priests.

Duffy said that the diocese is “far too dependent” on priests for pastoral care, administration, property maintenance, planning, and parish governance.

The “well-being” of clergy needs to be a “priority area for immediate attention,” he said.

“We need to move from a model that is clergy-dependent and based almost solely on sacramental provision to one that is broader in terms of recognizing, utilizing, and honoring the vocation and varied gifts of all the baptized and which will, over time, allow for really effective and meaningful co-responsibility in the Church’s mission,” he said.

In 2021, a survey by the Association of Catholic Priests found that only about 30% of Catholics in Ireland attend Mass weekly — a significant drop from 91% in 1975.

In 2022, a survey from the Irish organization Association of Catholic Priests found that 2,116 priests serve the nation’s 26 dioceses, which consists of more than 2,650 churches or “Mass Centers,” according to the Irish Times.

That survey also found that almost 15% of priests are over the age of 75 and “still working,” while more than a quarter are between the ages of 60 and 75, the outlet reported. That survey found that only 52 priests in the country were under 40 years old, and 464 priests were between the ages of 40 and 60.

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