Jimmy Lai, 78 and Catholic, may die in a Hong Kong prison

Jimmy Lai, the Catholic publisher and a leading figure of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, is 78 years old and is serving a twenty-year prison sentence. On 16 September 2026, a hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, chaired by Representative Chris Smith, examined his detention. His son, Sebastien Lai, testified before it.

"By the end of this year, my father will have spent six years in a maximum-security prison, in solitary confinement. At 78, he is Hong Kong's oldest political prisoner. With a twenty-year sentence hanging over him, if he is not released soon, he will very likely die in prison," he said.

His sister Claire, who was to testify at his side, was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago and has begun chemotherapy in London. Ahead of Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington, set for 24 September, the son pleaded for a release on humanitarian grounds with the Chinese authorities: "My father poses no threat. His imprisonment makes him a symbol of injustice; his death in prison would be an infamy. Let Jimmy Lai return to his family, and let him sit at his daughter's side in the hardest hour of his life."

That same day, Chris Smith introduced a bill, the Jimmy Lai Hong Kong Political Prisoner Accountability Act of 2026, which would require the State Department to assess without delay any death in custody of a Hong Kong political prisoner and to sanction those responsible. "Jimmy Lai is not imprisoned for having committed the slightest act of violence," he said. The charges that led to his conviction fall under Hong Kong's national security law; U.S. officials hold them to be fabricated.

At a summit in May, President Trump had asked Xi to release prisoners, including Lai and the pastor Ezra Jin Mingri. Jin was freed and reunited with his family in the United States before Independence Day; Lai, however, remains incarcerated. Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, recalled that Lai is "only one among hundreds of political prisoners" held in often appalling conditions, and that his release "would be something President Trump, Republicans and Democrats alike, and all freedom-loving people around the world would applaud. It would be a unifying event, at an hour when the world truly needs one." Lai's son is also pressing Pope Leo XIV to intervene to secure his father's release.

An isolated account, which other reports do not confirm, further alleges a sharp deterioration in Lai's health and claims that guards rehearsed a scenario in the event of his death. We report it for what it is: the allegation of a single source, to be verified.

What tradition teaches

The fifth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," is made to protect the life of the innocent. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that the magistrate who condemns is without fault only when he acts "with equity," to "protect the innocent" and "watch over the conservation of the life of men"; he who strikes out of "cupidity" or "cruelty," and not for the public good, falls on the contrary under the prohibition of the Law. The same catechism holds guilty of homicide the man who gives death "through imprudence, and for want of having taken the precautions and the cares necessary": the death willed by negligence is no less a murder than the one willed deliberately.

The eighth commandment measures the other side of the affair. "Thou shalt not bear false witness," the Catechism of Trent further specifies, is aimed first at the witness borne "in justice, against the truth." A conviction built on false accusations is not the exercise of justice: it is its counterfeit under the outward forms of law.

The measure

No act of violence is charged to Jimmy Lai. If the charges that convicted him are fabricated, as those who have examined his file affirm, then it is not justice that struck him but false witness clothed in the forms of justice, and the magistrate's sword did not protect the innocent: it struck him. And to let a man of 78 die in solitary confinement, when his release lies within the power of those who hold him, is to will by negligence what the commandment forbids by the act. Tradition does not here judge the balance of power or the outcome of a summit; it judges the act, and the act is named.

What the faithful should take from this

To visit the prisoner is one of the works of mercy that Our Lord will require at the judgment: "I was in prison, and you came to Me." The faithful who can open no door can still pray, and he must: for this man, for his sick daughter, and for the hundreds of other captives whose names no one knows. There is here neither a call to revolt nor a sentence upon the men who govern; there is a man in danger of death and a commandment of God. That is enough to know on which side tradition stands.

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the fifth commandment and the eighth commandment. Gospel according to Saint Matthew, XXV, 36 (Vulgate).