‘As a Catholic, I am taught to love’: when bishop jailed 22 years in China was set free, and gave the sermon at a Christmas mass in Hong Kong
- Having spent 22 years in prison on a charge of being a counter-revolutionary, Monsignor Dominic Tong, the bishop of Canton, was asked if he hated his jailers
- ‘As a Catholic, I am taught to love,’ he said. His Christmas sermon in Hong Kong had a message of peace on earth and purity of heart, the Post later reported
“Roman Catholics in Canton whose Bishop, Monsignor Dominic Tang, was arrested in February, have now severed all relations with the Vatican,” reported the South China Morning Post on July 9, 1958.
“The [Kwangtung Daily] newspaper said that laymen and clergy of the diocese last month set up the Kwangtung provincial branch of the Communist-sponsored ‘Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association’ which the Government founded a year ago.
“Speakers at a meeting in Canton claimed that the Vatican had ‘long been serving the aggressive policies of the imperialists,’ the paper said.”
On June 11, 1980, the Post reported that Tang, “the Roman Catholic Bishop of Canton who was imprisoned in February 1958, has been released, according to reports quoted by the left-wing Ta Kung Pao.
The newspaper said Bishop Tang was arrested on charges of being a counter-revolutionary and that he had been released, with the approval of the Canton Procurator Office, for ‘good behaviour and admitting his mistakes’.”