Cardinal Joseph Zen is among the six residents of Hong Kong nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their activism in the field of human rights. The group was proposed by six members of the US Congress “because they are ardent defenders of Hong Kong’s autonomy, human rights, and the rule of law.”

The Hong Kong authorities arrested the Cardinal last year for “foreign interference” put in jail. He is now undergoing a trial in Hong Kong because of his role in a fund to help pay the legal expenses of those arrested in the Hong Kong protests.

Last January, with a special permit, he was able to leave custody and arrive in Rome to attend the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI, whom he loved to the point of mingling with the crowd in Castel Gandolfo on February 28, 2013, to greet him on his last day in the pontificate.

During those days, Cardinal Zen was also received by Pope Francis an unexpected turn in their relationship, considering that the Pope had not met the Cardinal when he arrived in Rome in 2020 to try to prevent the renewal of the agreement with China for the appointment of bishops.

Zen was nominated along with other citizens of Hong Kong, all activists: newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai, democratic activist Joshua Wong, Tonyee Chow Hang-tung (lawyer persecuted for commemorating the Tiananmen massacre), journalist Gwyneth Ho Kwai-Lam, and unionist Cheuk-yang.

The nomination comes from a bipartisan group of the US Congress, one of the organizations in the world allowed to make Nobel Prizes nominations, according to the Nobel Prize Statutes.