Alessandro Digaetano Photographer

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ADChina_07_1_00

Cardinal Joseph Zen was born in Shanghai in 1932 to devoutly Catholic parents. He studied in a church school during the Second Sino-Japanese War, but he fled to Hong Kong from Shanghai to escape Communist rule at the end of the Chinese Civil War. He went on to study in Italy in 1955 and later became a priest in 1961. He was appointed the coadjutor Bishop of Hong Kong in 1996 by Pope John Paul II. On 24 March 2006 Pope Benedict XVI elevated him to the dignity of a Cardinal Priest in Hong Kong. A thoughtful, energetic cleric, Cardinal Zen has long been a thorn in the side of the state-run Church. When he was elevated to cardinal, Liu Bainian, the general secretary of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, described the move as "a hostile act". Cardinal Zen is the most senior representative of the Roman Catholic Church in China, and an outspoken defender of religious freedom and civil rights. He has close links with both the government-supervised churches and the "underground" churches, a clandestine Church, with some 10 million adherents, tenaciously maintains links with the Vatican.

Filename
ADChina_07_1_002281.jpg
Copyright
Alessandro Digaetano
Image Size
4288x2848 / 2.3MB
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Portraits
Cardinal Joseph Zen was born in Shanghai in 1932 to devoutly Catholic parents. He studied in a church school during the Second Sino-Japanese War, but he fled to Hong Kong from Shanghai to escape Communist rule at the end of the Chinese Civil War. He went on to study in Italy in 1955 and later became a priest in 1961. He was appointed the coadjutor Bishop of Hong Kong in 1996 by Pope John Paul II. On 24 March 2006 Pope Benedict XVI elevated him to the dignity of a Cardinal Priest in Hong Kong. A thoughtful, energetic cleric, Cardinal Zen has long been a thorn in the side of the state-run Church. When he was elevated to cardinal, Liu Bainian, the general secretary of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, described the move as "a hostile act". Cardinal Zen is the most senior representative of the Roman Catholic Church in China, and an outspoken defender of religious freedom and civil rights. He has close links with both the government-supervised churches and the "underground" churches, a clandestine Church, with some 10 million adherents, tenaciously maintains links with the Vatican.