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steve
管理人員
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Posted -
2004/5/17 下午 02:28:23
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13:45 17May2004
SHANGHAI (AP)--Authorities in northern China detained two priests from the underground Catholic church as they were about to begin classes on natural birth control and theology, a U.S.-based lobby group said Monday.
Police in Dingzhou, a city in Hebei province, refused to comment on the report by the Cardinal Kung Foundation that they had detained Lu Genjun, 42, and fellow priest Cheng Xiaoli, 40.
The Stamford, Connecticut-based foundation provides support to China's underground church and monitors the communist government's efforts to suppress it.
Lu, ordained in 1990, was recently released from a labor camp where he had spent three years. The report said he was detained in Dingzhou. Cheng's whereabouts weren't known.
China broke ties with the Vatican in 1951 and demands that Catholics worship only in churches approved by the China Patriotic Catholic Association, a state-controlled body which doesn't recognize papal authority.
Many Chinese Catholics, however, remain loyal to the pope and risk arrest by worshipping in unofficial churches and private homes. The state church claims 4 million believers. The Cardinal Kung Foundation said the unofficial church has 12 million followers. Many believers and some priests move between the two churches.
Hebei province, adjacent to Beijing, is a stronghold of Catholic sentiment. A number of priests in the province have been detained, some for years.
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