|
Report: China sending PC priests abroad as 'intelligence operatives'
|
Special to World Tribune.com
EAST-ASIA-INTEL.COM
Monday, July 31, 2006
Western intelligence services say China is taking advantage of a thaw in ties with the Vatican to send its state-ordained priests abroad, according to a newsletter.
The Paris-based Intelligence Online reported last week that changes in the balance of power between the underground, unofficial Catholic Church and the official, communist-dominated Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association are under way following recent talks between envoys from Rome to Beijing,
The official church is headed by Fu Tieshan and Liu Bainian, also known as the Red Pope.
Chinese counterintelligence and Liu regard the Vatican and unofficial Catholics as potential threats, similar to the Falun Gong sect. The government denounced the Vatican’s appointment of 40 bishops in the unofficial church in February.
“China's foreign intelligence service Guoanbu is taking advantage of the thaw with the Vatican to send government-approved Chinese priests abroad," the report stated. "They are, in fact, intelligence operatives, as European counter-intelligence agencies have come to realize in recent months.”
Two papal envoys held high-level talks in Beijing in late June, the newsletter reported. They included Archbishop Claudio Celli, of the Vatican property office who is charge of relations with China, and monsignor Gianfranco Rota Graziosi, a senior aide in the Vatican state secretariat.
Copyright © 2006 East West
Services, Inc.
|
