On September 8, 1955, Kung, along with several hundred priests and Church leaders, was arrested and imprisoned. He was sentenced five years later to life imprisonment for counter-revolutionary activities.[1]
Kung was secretly named a Cardinalin pectore in the consistory of 1979 by Pope John Paul II. The formula in pectore is used when a pope names a cardinal without announcing it publicly in order to protect the safety of the cardinal and his congregation. After he was released in 1986, he was kept under house arrest until 1988. Kung learned he was a cardinal during a private meeting with the Pope in the Vatican City in 1988, and his membership in the College of Cardinals was made public in 1991.[2][3] By then, he had reached 80, so he did not have the right to participate in a conclave. Kung left China in 1988 and settled in the United States.
Paul Philip Mariani. Church Militant Bishop Kung and Catholic Resistance in Communist Shanghai. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2011). ISBN9780674063174.
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