Sometimes what isn’t heard makes the oddest impression. As more and more nations have expressed their concern about the growing evidence of concentration camps and even genocide in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, there has been silence from the one entity that has the whole of suffering humanity at the core of its mission. I refer to the Holy See.
Pope Francis — who was open in his criticism of Donald Trump’s Mexican “border wall” — has nothing to say about this publicly. Nor, indeed, has the Pope made any public reference to Beijing’s trashing of the judicial independence of Hong Kong. As the pre-eminent Catholic commentator George Weigel noted last week: “Earlier this month . . . a Sunday Angelus address in which Pope