{"id":88253,"date":"2026-11-09T11:44:55","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T16:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/?p=88253"},"modified":"2026-11-09T11:44:55","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T16:44:55","slug":"china-has-trapped-a-dying-pastor-from-coming-home-to-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/china-has-trapped-a-dying-pastor-from-coming-home-to-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"China Has Trapped a Dying Pastor From Coming Home to the US"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From\u00a0 <em>ACLJ<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p>Pastor John Cao, a U.S. Lawful Permanent Resident from North Carolina, completed every day of a seven-year sentence in a Chinese prison for building schools and delivering humanitarian aid to impoverished children along the China-Burma border. But when he was finally released on March 5, 2024, he was still not free to return home. He has now waited more than two and a half years for Beijing to allow him to come home to his family in the United States \u2013 and this year, doctors gave him a diagnosis that turns that wait into something closer to a death sentence: Stage 4 cancer.<\/p>\n<p>Under <a href=\"https:\/\/gy.china-embassy.gov.cn\/eng\/lsfw\/201204\/t20120426_4331997.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Article 14 of China\u2019s Passport Law<\/a>, authorities may withhold a released prisoner\u2019s passport for up to three years (March 5, 2027) \u2013 but nothing requires a wait that long. The statute gives officials discretion to issue a passport after just six months, but they haven\u2019t, despite multiple requests by Pastor Cao.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From\u00a0 ACLJ: Pastor John Cao, a U.S. Lawful Permanent Resident from North Carolina, completed every day of a seven-year sentence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-news","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}