EWTN News portal reports (September 3, 2026) that a Hong Kong appellate panel upheld convictions against the conciliar sect’s “Cardinal” Joseph Zen and four lay collaborators for operating an unregistered “society”—the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund—aiding 2019–2020 protesters against the Chinese Communist Party. The piece frames the verdict as a blow to “pro-democracy” activism and “religious freedom,” highlighting fines of roughly $500 while noting the defendants escaped far graver “national security” charges. **The article epitomizes the conciliar sect’s reduction of the Church’s divine mission to secular human-rights advocacy, canonizing liberalism as the new gospel.**
The “Cardinal” of the Conciliar Sect: A False Shepherd in a False Church
The reported protagonist, Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, wears the red hat of the conciliar sect, bestowed by the usurper “Pope” Benedict XVI (Ratzinger) and retained under the subsequent antipopes Francis (Bergoglio) and now Leo XIV (Prevost). As the Defense of Sedevacantism file demonstrates, a manifest heretic loses the papacy ipso facto—”a Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church” (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice). The line of antipopes beginning with John XXIII has propagated the synthesis of all heresies, Modernism, condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis and Lamentabili sane exitu. Zen, as a “cardinal” of this counterfeit hierarchy, possesses no jurisdiction, no sacramental authority, and no title to the episcopate; he is a layman masquerading as a prince of the Church, leading souls into the abomination of desolation (Matt. 24:15).
Factual Level: Political Agitation Disguised as Charity
The 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund was not a work of supernatural charity—caritas ordered to the salvation of souls—but a political instrument bankrolling resistance to a civil ordinance (the extradition bill) under the banner of “democracy” and “human rights.” The article admits the fund “supported Hong Kong protesters who opposed the 2019 extradition bill” and that “more than 10,000 protesters were arrested.” This is not the opus Dei of the Church, which is the salus animarum (salvation of souls), but the opus hominis of liberal revolution. The defendants’ defense—that they “did not believe the fund qualified as a ‘society'”—reveals a mentality wholly subservient to positive law, not to lex divina. They sought not the regnum Christi but a secular “civil society” exempt from state control, thereby conceding the state’s totalitarian claim to define all association.
Linguistic Level: The Vocabulary of the Civitas Terrena
The EWTN report drips with the lexicon of the Civitas Terrena: “pro-democracy advocates,” “freedom of association,” “public safety,” “national security,” “political dissidents,” “civil liberties.” These are not Catholic categories. They are the idols of the French Revolution, baptized by the conciliar sect’s Dignitatis Humanae. The judges’ ruling—that the Societies Ordinance strikes a “reasonable balance” between “freedom of association and public safety, public order, and national security”—is pure legal positivism. The article uncritically echoes this, treating the state’s “broad discretion to control, monitor, or dismantle private associations” as a normative framework within which the Church must maneuver. **Silence about the Social Kingship of Christ, the rights of God, the duty of states to profess the true religion, and the eternal destiny of the protesters is the gravest accusation.** As Pius XI teaches in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.”
Theological Level: Apostasy from the Kingship of Christ
“If rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ, but let them fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.”
—Pius XI, Quas Primas (1925)
The conciliar sect’s “Cardinal” Zen, far from demanding that the Hong Kong government—and the Chinese Communist Party—publicly venerate Christ the King, collaborates with liberal activists to demand “democratic rights” under a godless regime. This is the error condemned in the Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX, 1864):
“77. In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.”
“55. The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.”
The article’s sympathetic portrayal of Jimmy Lai—”a Catholic pro-democracy activist who was sentenced to 20 years in prison”—as a martyr for “freedom” confirms the sect’s substitution of libertas ecclesiastica (freedom of the Church to teach and govern for eternal salvation) with libertas naturalistica (freedom of conscience, worship, press, assembly). The true Church, as Pius XI reminds us, “demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority.” Zen’s fund sought no such freedom for the Church; it sought space for a secular protest movement.
Symptomatic Level: The Fruit of Vatican II’s False Ecumenism with the World
This case is the inevitable fruit of the conciliar revolution’s embrace of the world. The Gaudium et Spes mentality—dialogue with “civil society,” “human rights” as the new beatitudes—has produced a clergy that functions as NGO managers. Zen’s “humanitarian relief” is the caritas of the Church of the New Advent: horizontal, immanentist, devoid of the Cross. The article notes the defendants “were initially arrested on suspicion of violating a 2020 national security law, which could have carried penalties of up to life in prison” but “none faced charges.” The conciliar sect celebrates this legalistic reprieve as a victory, ignoring that the true martyr confesses Christus Rex before the tribunal of the Antichrist, not “human rights” before a communist court.
The Lamentabili sane exitu condemnation of Modernist propositions applies directly:
“59. Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples, but rather initiated a certain religious movement, applied or applicable to different times and places.”
The conciliar sect has replaced the immutable doctrine of Christ the King with a “religious movement” adaptable to “democracy,” “rule of law,” and “civil society.” Zen’s conviction is not a persecution for the faith; it is a traffic ticket for unregistered political activity. The article’s omission of any reference to the Missa Tridentina, the Sacramentum Poenitentiae, the status gratiae, or the Finis Ultimus exposes the spiritual vacuum at the heart of the conciliar project.
Conclusion: No Crown for Collaborators with the World
The “Cardinal” Zen and his co-defendants have their reward: the praise of EWTN, the admiration of liberal “Catholics,” and a fine of $500. They have gained the civitas terrena and lost the Civitas Dei. As St. Augustine warns (Ep. ad Macedonium, c. III), “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men”—but only when ordered to God. Hong Kong’s “pro-democracy” movement, blessed by the conciliar sect, seeks a harmony sine Deo, which is no harmony at all but the “discord sown everywhere” lamented by Pius XI. **Let the faithful flee the conciliar sect’s false shepherds, reject the idols of “human rights” and “democracy,” and cleave to the true Church of Christ the King, outside of which there is no salvation, no true liberty, and no peace.**
Source:
Hong Kong judges uphold Cardinal Zen’s conviction over fund to help protesters (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 03.09.2026