A commentary
Across continents, the first half of 2026 has brought troubling scenes that feel strangely out of step with the times. In South Korea, a 95‑year‑old church leader awaits trial. In Nicaragua, an 80‑year‑old bishop with a pacemaker was taken into custody. In Japan, a long‑standing religious organisation lost its legal status.
None of these cases involved violence, yet each carried the heavy imprint of state power pressing against matters of faith.
It is difficult not to feel a quiet sadness at the sight of age and belief meeting the cold machinery of law. Whatever the details of each case, the image of elderly men of faith facing confinement evokes something deeper — a sense that the world’s tolerance for spiritual difference is thinning.
International conventions have long affirmed that freedom of religion is not a privilege but a right. Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects freedom of thought, conscience and religion; other provisions remind states that detention should be rare, proportionate and respectful of human dignity. Yet these principles seem to fade
When governments anywhere begin to treat belief as a matter for prosecution, the ripple reaches far beyond their borders.
Perhaps the question is not whether the state can be the judge of faith, but why it would wish to be.
Faith, by its nature, belongs to the interior life — to conscience, reflection, and the quiet spaces where age and experience meet hope. To place that under arrest is to mistake devotion for defiance.
The world’s elderly believers deserve gentler treatment than handcuffs and courtrooms. They have lived through enough history to know that belief cannot be legislated, only lived.
And when they are detained for what they think or pray, it is not just their freedom that falters — it is ours.
WE