Report- China detains five Catholic clergy

BEIJING -- Five clergy members of China's underground Roman Catholic church were detained this week in a city west of Beijing, a U.S.-based religious group said Saturday.

The five were detained Tuesday in the city of Baoding when they were they were on their way to visit Rev. Lu Genjun, who was recently released from a labor camp, said the Cardinal Kung Foundation, which is based in Stamford, Conn.

The foundation said it had no other details. A man who answered the phone at police headquarters in Baoding, about 60 miles west of Beijing, said he didn't know about the case. The man refused to give his name.

China allows only state-monitored worship, and underground Catholics are frequently arrested and harassed. Despite that, the unofficial Catholic church is believed to have as many as 12 million followers, compared with some 4 million for China's officially sanctioned church.

The communist government ordered Catholics to break ties with the Vatican in 1951. The Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which runs government-authorized Catholic churches, doesn't recognize papal authority.

The Kung foundation, based in Stamford, Conn., identified those detained this week as the Revs. Kang Fuliang, Chen Guozhen, Pang Guangzhao and Joseph Yin and Deacon Wang Lijun.

Elsewhere, it said another priest in the underground church, the Rev. Lu Xiaozhou, was arrested June 16 in the southeastern port city of Wenzhou as he prepared to administer a sacrament to a dying Catholic.

"The Beijing government continues to declare that its constitution guarantees human rights and religious freedom. Yet these arrests of Catholic clergy continue," said a written statement from Joseph Kung, the foundation's president.