'Jimmy Lai: a life sentence in all but name', Benedict Rogers

When Pope Leo prays the Angelus this coming Sunday, he should pray publicly for Jimmy Lai and his family. The 20-year prison sentence imposed on one of Hong Kong’s leading pro-democracy campaigners and most prominent lay Catholics is both an egregious travesty of justice, an assault on human rights and dignity, and an affront to the Church, and the Pontiff should say so.

Jimmy Lai is a 78-year-old British citizen who has been imprisoned for more than five years already and has spent most of that time in solitary confinement in a small cell with no natural light and in extreme heat. As a diabetic with a heart condition, Mr Lai’s health has deteriorated significantly and he has suffered dramatic weight loss. He is permitted less than an hour a day for exercise in a confined space. Most significantly, as a devout Catholic he has been denied the right to receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion for most of the past five years.

Now he faces a 20-year jail sentence which, given his age and poor health, is effectively a life sentence – and ultimately a death sentence. Convicted under Hong Kong’s draconian national security law of the crime of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and, under a separate law, of the crime of conspiracy to publish seditious materials, Mr Lai’s true crimes are – as the head of his international legal team, Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, puts it – conspiracy to commit journalism, to talk about politics with politicians and to discuss human rights with human rights organisations. I am among those ‘foreign forces’ with whom he is accused of colluding and was named 95 times in the judgment issued just before Christmas last year.

Mr Lai’s story is a truly remarkable one, told vividly in a documentary by the Acton Institute called “The Hong Konger” and in Mark Clifford’s excellent biography, The Troublemaker. At the age of just 12, Mr Lai fled the famine in mainland China caused by Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and came to Hong Kong as a stowaway. He worked as a child labourer in a garment factory before eventually establishing his own successful retail business, and then moved into the hotel, retail and publishing sectors.

The Tiananmen Massacre in 1989 was a turning point for Mr Lai, as he witnessed the Chinese regime gunning down peaceful student protesters. He resolved to challenge the Chinese Communist Party’s repression, founding first Next magazine and then Apple Daily, the most popular Chinese-language pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong – shut down by the Chinese regime in 2021. He became one of Hong Kong’s most vocal champions of democracy and human rights and a thorn in the side of the Beijing dictatorship, although always advocating non-violent, peaceful protest.

Within days of Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997, Mr Lai was baptised into the Catholic Church by the courageous Cardinal Joseph Zen, a long-time critic of Beijing. Inspired by his wife Teresa, a devout Catholic, he grew in the faith and, during the past five years in prison, has spent most of his time in prayer, reading spiritual classics and drawing religious pictures. As I wrote in December, just after his conviction, I have one of his prison drawings of Christ on the Cross hanging on my wall.

Politicians around the world condemned the sentence within hours of it being handed down. The British Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, said Mr Lai had been sentenced “for exercising his right to freedom of expression, following a politically motivated prosecution” and called on the Hong Kong authorities to “end his appalling ordeal and release him on humanitarian grounds, so that he may be reunited with his family”. She promised to “rapidly engage further” on his case. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, similarly “deplored” the jail sentence and called for Mr Lai’s immediate release. “Jimmy Lai is a publisher sentenced to 20 years in prison for exercising rights protected under international law,” he said. “This verdict needs to be promptly quashed as incompatible with international law.”

Much more must be done to seek Mr Lai’s release. Britain has a special responsibility to press Beijing to grant him clemency on medical grounds, and it should coordinate efforts with like-minded allies. Prime Minister Keir Starmer missed the opportunity to use leverage to seek Mr Lai’s freedom on his recent visit to China, although he said he “brought up” the case. President Donald Trump must make it a priority to deliver on his previous repeated promises to free Mr Lai when he visits Beijing in April. Mr Lai’s case must feature prominently in every official engagement with China, until it becomes an inconvenience to Xi Jinping to continue to hold him in jail. But among the voices of world leaders, the Vatican’s is so far missing. Pope Leo – who met Mr Lai’s wife and daughter last October – should speak out, as should Catholic clergy around the world. In Masses this week and this coming Sunday, prayers should be said for Jimmy Lai and his family. Vigils should be held. And the Holy Father should use the earliest opportunity – whether the Angelus next Sunday or another appropriate occasion – to pray publicly for Mr Lai and call for his release on humanitarian grounds. If ever there was a political prisoner deserving of the Vatican’s support, it is Mr Lai.

Last Sunday I was in Washington, DC, and I went to Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. After Mass, I prayed beside a beautiful image of Our Lady of China and lit a candle for my friend Jimmy Lai. Over the past five years I have lit candles and said prayers in churches and cathedrals around the world, from Rome to Prague, from Seoul to Taipei, from Warsaw and Kraków to Westminster to Walsingham. I will continue to do so, every day, until Jimmy Lai is freed and reunited with his family. I call on the worldwide Church to join me.

This article was published in The Catholic Herald on 10 February 2026.

Photo: Studio Incendo, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons