Bishop Stephen Cow Sau-yan of Hong Kong said that Catholics should be cautious, working for reconciliation rather than confrontation, in a newly published interview.

The Jesuit prelate said that his advice to the people of Hong Kong is: “Sit and watch the clouds rise. It’s time to discern instead of taking action.”

Bishop Chow responded cautiously to a question about the tough new “national security” law in Hong Kong, which has led to the arrest of Catholic pro-democracy leaders including Cardinal Joseph Zen. “The difficulty of the national security law lies in not knowing where the red line is,” Bishop Chow said. “Everyone needed to know where the boundaries were so they would know how to express themselves.”