By LifeSiteNews (Politics) | Created at 2026-09-19 14:06:21 | Updated at 2026-09-20 06:08:53
16 hours ago
Sat Sep 19, 2026 - 9:56 am EDT
(LifeSiteNews) — The son of the Communist Chinese regime’s most famous political prisoner has called upon Pope Leo to help free his father.
Sebastien Lai, son of Catholic Jimmy Lai, came to Washington D.C. in advance of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit next week in order to testify before Congress about his elderly father’s imprisonment in Hong Kong.
Lai’s son pleaded with President Trump to help secure his father’s release and also called on Pope Leo XIV to use his moral authority.
“ It would definitely help for the pope to say my father’s name,” said Sebastien Lai at an at event at Georgetown University following his Capitol Hill appearance. “The head of the Catholic faith has incredible moral power, especially in a case where it concerns a Catholic.”
“By the end of this year my father will have spent six years in a maximum-security prison in solitary,” Lai’s son told members of Congress on Wednesday. “At 78, he is the oldest political prisoner in Hong Kong. With a 20-year sentence looming over him, if he’s not freed soon, he will most likely die in prison.”
“My sister Claire was to testify beside me today. A few weeks ago, she was diagnosed with cancer,” said Lai. “I was with her in London last week as she began chemotherapy. My father learned of his own daughter’s diagnosis from a maximum-security prison. He cannot hold her hand. She wants nothing more than to have him with her for this fight.”
“We hope the Chinese authorities will consider what compassionate release would mean for her, and for a 78-year-old man who has already suffered enough,” Sebastien Lai continued.
“America understands, in its bones, that freedom dies with the last man willing to defend it and that the cost of not standing up for liberty is not felt until it is too late,” he said.
The appeal to Xi “is simple,” Lai explained. “My father poses no threat. His imprisonment makes him a symbol of injustice; his death in prison would be a disgrace. Let Jimmy Lai come home to his family, and let him sit beside his daughter in her hardest moment.”
As reported extensively by LifeSiteNews, Jimmy Lai was punished for his opposition to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He was charged in 2020 with “collusion with foreign forces” in violation of the draconian National Security Law (NSL) that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in order to suppress dissent against the CCP. Lai’s tabloid, Apple Daily, published criticism of the CCP, prompting retaliation from the communist authorities.
RELATED: Reggie Littlejohn urges Trump, Starmer to pressure China for Jimmy Lai’s release
Critics have denounced the recent 20-year sentencing of Lai, the harshest yet imposed under the NSL, as especially cruel given that 78-year-old Lai is likely to die in prison due to his age and ill-health.
Lai escaped to Hong Kong from China as a child and became a self-made businessman. He founded Apple Daily in 1995 . The paper became one of the leading newspapers in Hong Kong but closed its doors in June 2021 when the offices were raided by CCP security personnel and Lai was arrested.
Lai’s arrest and subsequent jail sentence caused international outrage. The U.S. State Department issued an October 2022 statement in which it deplored the Chinese National Security Law’s “systematic dismantling of Hong Kong’s autonomy” and called for a restoration of “respect for press freedom in Hong Kong, where a once-vibrant independent media environment has all but disappeared.”
Jimmy Lai’s daughter Claire published a National Catholic Register (NCR) commentary on the day of her brother’s testimony in D.C.
Claire wrote of how her cancer diagnosis increased her father’s suffering but also testified to his exemplary faith under extreme hardship.
“From the start of his imprisonment, he has also spent time drawing the crucifixion. He keeps one on the wall of his cell for personal devotion and contemplation,” said Lai’s daughter. “The crucifix is the ultimate manifestation of divine love for us sinners. On the cross, Christ took on our sins and conquered them, and from the cross He calls us to embrace his example in suffering.”
“My father bears all his ills patiently and joyfully, recognizing the graces they bring,” she continued. “Over the last six years, he has offered up his physical and emotional ailments in union with our Lord. Knowing that, when united with Christ’s suffering, it carries redemption and divine grace. This is a profound mystery. I hope to bear my much smaller cross half as well as he has. That this will unite me more deeply with both Christ and my earthly father. Taken this way, it’s hard to see my diagnosis as anything but a blessing.”
READ: Candace Owens: ‘Our Church is not free’ under Vatican-China deal
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