By Daniel Payne
CNA Staff, Dec 15, 2025 /
07:00 am
Jimmy Lai, the Catholic human rights advocate whose long-running national security trial in China has drawn criticism and charges of persecution, was found guilty on Dec. 15 of multiple violations of China’s national security laws, bringing an end to several years of what advocates have described as a politically motivated show trial against a popular Hong Kong publisher.
Lai, 78, is facing up to life in prison. His sentence will be handed down at a later date.
His U.K.-based attorneys at Doughty Street Chambers on Dec. 15 called the verdict “a stain on a once enviable Hong Kong legal system.” Lead counsel Caoilfhionn Gallagher described Lai as “a brave, brilliant 78-year-old man” convicted in a “vindictive and grossly unfair verdict.”
“After five long years of imprisonment, which violates international law, it is time to end this sham process and release Mr Lai,” she said. “If China fails to release him immediately and unconditionally, the international community must hold China to account.”
Lai’s son Sebastien described the ruling as “a dark day for anyone who believes in truth, freedom, and justice.”
“My family and I are saddened but not surprised by the guilty verdict in my father’s case,” he said. “We have always known that my father was being prosecuted solely for his courageous journalism and unwavering commitment to democracy.”
Lai’s daughter Claire, meanwhile, said the verdict “proves that the authorities still fear our father, even in his weakened state, for what he represents.”
“We stand by his innocence and condemn this miscarriage of justice,” she said, calling on the United States to “continue to exert pressure for my father to be returned to our family so that he can recover in peace.”
The verdict caps off a yearslong legal process that has seen Lai prosecuted and convicted on numerous other charges including fraud and unlawful assembly. The former publishing mogul had already been handed multiple lengthy prison sentences ahead of Monday’s verdict.
‘Our Lady is protecting him’
Lai, who converted to Catholicism in 1997, was previously known as one of Hong Kong’s most outspoken human rights advocates. For several decades he sat at the helm of a small media empire that included Apple Daily, an outspoken pro-democracy tabloid in a political environment tightly controlled by the Communist Party of China.
Arrested in 2020, Lai was charged with violations of China’s then-new Hong Kong national security law. The security measure was broadly viewed as a means for Communist Party leaders to exert greater control over the special administrative region, particularly after widespread human rights protests in 2019.
In the coming years Lai would be sentenced multiple times to prison sentences ranging from 14 months to nearly six years on charges that included participating in the 2019 protests and lease fraud.
Lai’s plight has drawn support and advocacy from around the world, including from Catholic leaders and organizations. In 2021 he was awarded the Christifidelis Laici award by organizers of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, while the next year he was given an honorary degree from The Catholic University of America.
In 2023 Lai was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Cardinal Joseph Zen and numerous others for their work in promoting human rights in Hong Kong. That same year nearly a dozen bishops and archbishops from around the world called for Lai’s release, criticizing the “cruelty and oppression” to which he had been subject for years.
Lai’s family has periodically spoken out in favor of the jailed activist. Speaking to EWTN News in August, Lai’s son Sebastien described his father’s legal trial as a “kangaroo court,” though he said his father was “still strong in spirit and still strong in mind” even as his health faltered.
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Lai’s daughter Claire, meanwhile, told EWTN News President and COO Montse Alvarado this month that the family has “waited a very, very long time for his cases to be resolved.”
“As a daughter, every day I wake up and I hope that today is the day we get my dad home … the day we get to go to Mass together, or to eat dinner around the table, things that years ago I almost took for granted,” she said.
Claire described her reaction to hearing that her father had fallen down in prison one day and was unable to get up: “When you’re a daughter … and you hear stories like that, you wish you could yourself physically pull him up when he is in pain like that.”
Yet Lai reportedly prayed to the Blessed Mother upon falling, Claire said, at which point he was able to regain his feet. “[Y]ou find such great comfort in the fact that Our Lady is protecting him,” she said.
Support from President Trump
Lai’s imprisonment and trials have even drawn support from President Donald Trump. In August the Republican president said he intended to do “everything” possible to free Lai from prison. Trump subsequently spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping in October, urging him to release Lai.
He has further drawn support from the U.S. Congress, including the Nobel Prize nomination and a call for sanctions against Hong Kong officials if Lai isn’t released from prison.
British political leaders have also called for his release, as have advocates at the United Nations. The “Support Jimmy Lai” initiative says Lai has spent just over 1,800 days in prison.
On Dec. 15 U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the government condemned the “politically motivated prosecution” that handed down the verdict.
“Jimmy Lai has been targeted by the Chinese and Hong Kong governments for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression,” she said, adding that British leaders will “continue to call for Mr. Lai’s immediate release, for all necessary treatment, and for full access to independent medical professionals.”
In addition to his other awards, Lai in October was given the 2025 World Press Freedom Hero award by the International Press Institute. The Bradley Foundation this year also named him an honorary recipient of its Bradley Prize.
Daniel Payne is a senior editor at Catholic News Agency. He previously worked at the College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.
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