Next week, 135 cardinals will gather inside the Vatican for the conclave, a secretive meeting to decide who will succeed the late Pope Francis. Around the world, people are speculating: who will the next pontiff be? But in Taiwan, a more common discussion has been: who are we sending to the inauguration? The former vice-president Chen Chien-jen recently returned from Vatican City, where he represented Taiwan at Francis’s funeral. But the committed Catholic hopes he won’t be asked to repeat the journey to welcome in the successor. Instead, he is…
Tag: Vatican
Son of jailed Hong Kong media tycoon condemns UK government ‘weakness’
The British son of the jailed Hong Kong media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai has criticised Britain and the Vatican for failing to speak out strongly against the crackdown on dissent in the Chinese territory. At a Washington event about the human rights situation in Hong Kong, Sebastien Lai said self-censorship in the former British colony was the anticipated result of the national security crackdown there, but the “hypocrisy” of some governments trying to trade with China was unexpected. “We are incredibly grateful that the Americans have been a lot stronger on…