While the Chinese Communist Party continues to encroach on Hong Kong’s autonomy, the city’s new bishop is encouraging young people to be like a giraffe. In its first interview of the month, Italian newspaper World and Mission spoke with Hong Kong’s Jesuit bishop, who was installed just two months ago. Church Militant’s William Mahoney has more on the interview and the bishop’s zoo-animal analogy.
In the wake of protests and CCP crackdowns, Hong Kong bishop Stephen Chow told young people disappointed by the political situation, “Be a down-to-earth giraffe with a vision of the future. But you can’t have all your feet on the ground at the same time: When the giraffe moves, one is in the air. There is a need for vision. … Don’t look at the walls; look to the future.”
Before becoming bishop, Chow spent his life in academia, both as a student and as a professor. He obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees in psychology and philosophy, and a doctorate of education from Harvard.
Chow dodged World and Mission’s question about difficulties presented by the national security law.
Bp. Stephen Chow: “We need to understand what is legal and what is not. It is our duty to help [students] understand the situation and, at the same time, help them think. Some people in academia are not balanced. Either they’re rigidly conservative or neurotically liberal. These extremes are not healthy.”
The 2020 national security law, in effect, permits the CCP to spy on, detain and criminally try anybody it deems guilty of secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign organizations.
Devout Catholic entrepreneur and activist Jimmy Lai is currently behind bars as one of the law’s first victims. His publication, Apple Daily, was forced to close in 2021 after the national security law was used to freeze its assets.
So far, Bp. Chow has been silent on Jimmy Lai and the CCP’s other Catholic victims — like his predecessor, Hong Kong’s bishop emeritus, Cdl. Joseph Zen.
Ta Kung Pao, a CCP-controlled newspaper based in Hong Kong, recently ran a hit piece on Cdl. Zen titled, “Lawless Zen Abuses His Priesthood to Disrupt Hong Kong.”
Zen has been a strong voice against the CCP and the Vatican’s capitulation to it.
Cdl. Joseph Zen: “He [Pope Francis] said no word to remind the Chinese government their duty to respect human rights.”
The World and Mission interview begins with Chow asserting, “I find it unacceptable human dignity is ignored, trampled on or removed.” But Chow fails to mention even one concrete example of the CCP’s constant trampling on human dignity, like that of Jimmy Lai and Cdl. Zen in Hong Kong, and that of underground Catholics and Uyghurs in mainland China.
Uyghur woman: “They didn’t just rape. They were barbaric. They had beaten all over my body.”
While Chow advises being like a giraffe in the face of oppressive laws, he might consider being more like a lion in the face of communist wolves, circling his sheep.
Bishop Chow’s giraffe analogy extends to his episcopal coat of arms, where a giraffe occupies the shield’s upper-left corner.
