National Catholic Register, Edward Pentin: Lord Christopher Patten, the last governor of the former British colony Hong Kong, has joined others in criticizing the Vatican for its dealings with the People’s Republic of China, saying the Vatican is guilty of “self-delusion” and should make public its recently renewed provisional agreement with Beijing.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Sunday program broadcast Oct. 30, Patten, who is Catholic, said the Vatican has been “guilty of what others have been guilty of in dealing with China, a degree of self-delusion.”
“They imagine that they are getting things out of China when China is getting an awful lot of things out of its interlocutor,” he said, and referred to Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, the bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, who is currently standing trial in the China-administered territory for being a trustee of a humanitarian fund that helped pro-democracy protesters pay their legal fees. Report is here.
