Human rights advocate and Catholic Jimmy Lai was sentenced in Hong Kong yesterday to 20 years in prison over what Chinese officials claim were national security violations. Source: EWTN News.
The sentencing comes after Lai’s December conviction under China’s wide-reaching security law, which capped a years-long legal process during which he was found guilty on multiple other charges, including fraud and unlawful assembly.
Lai, 78, who was known for years as the publisher of the outspoken pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily, was first arrested in 2020 after alleged violations of Chinese national security policy.
The government has charged him multiple times since then, holding him without bail and sentencing him to lengthy prison stretches, including a 69-month sentence in December 2022 for a fraud conviction.
Lai’s plight has drawn support from around the world, including from high-ranking national leaders such as United States President Donald Trump, who has advocated for Lai’s release and who reportedly spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping about the issue in October 2025.
Lai has also drawn support from lawmakers, activists, religious leaders and civil rights leaders around the world.
In 2025, he was named an honorary recipient of the Bradley Prize, an award honouring individuals who in part espouse “the ideals of the Western tradition.”
Though known for his decades of pro-democracy activism, Lai is also an outspoken Catholic whose faith has sustained him throughout his imprisonment.
Having converted to Catholicism in 1997, Lai — along with his wife Teresa — raised his son Sebastien and daughter Claire in what Claire described as “a very loving Catholic family”.
Claire Lai said in December that her father’s incarceration “has just deepened his faith”.
He has regularly read the Gospel when permitted by his prison guards, she said, and he “wants to be remembered [as] a faithful servant of Our Lord.”
In November 2023 a group of 10 Catholic bishops and archbishops called on the Hong Kong government to release Lai, arguing that his “persecution … has gone on long enough.”
“There is no place for such cruelty and oppression in a territory that claims to uphold the rule of law and respect the right to freedom of expression,” the prelates said.
FULL STORY
Catholic activist Jimmy Lai sentenced to 20 years in prison in Hong Kong national security trial (By Daniel Payne, EWTN News)
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