NEWS STORY: Vatican accuses China of subjecting priests to sexual blackmail

c. 1999 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Chinese authorities regularly employ prostitutes to help brainwash Roman Catholic priests and subject them to sexual blackmail in order to weaken their loyalty to Rome, the Vatican charged Monday (Jan 4). Fides, a publication of the missionary Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, leveled the charge […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Chinese authorities regularly employ prostitutes to help brainwash Roman Catholic priests and subject them to sexual blackmail in order to weaken their loyalty to Rome, the Vatican charged Monday (Jan 4).

Fides, a publication of the missionary Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, leveled the charge in reporting the arrest of the Rev. Li Qinghua, 31. The arrest reportedly occurred in November.


Fides said the priest continues to be held in a guest house that serves as a special prison for priests in Xushui County in Hebei Province.”We have been informed that like many other Catholic priests detained in Chinese prisons, Father Li Qinghua is undergoing a sort of brainwashing to undermine his priestly formation and vocation,”Fides said.

Chinese Christians generally fall into two groups _ those recognized by the government and so-called”underground”Christians who refuse to register with the government. In the case of Catholics,”underground”church members maintain a religious loyalty to the pope rather than the government. Chinese political leaders refuse to recognize church officials, such as bishops and cardinals, named by the Vatican.

The Fides report comes in the midst of what appears to be a new crackdown on pro-democracy dissidents in China. On Monday, news reports from China said the government had detained another dissident, bringing to nine the number of pro-democracy activists arrested in recent weeks.

In its report, Fides said priests previously subjected to brainwashing reported it”consists of severe interrogation and physical and psychological torture at the hands of a male and female `special unit.'”Female service personnel (actually prostitutes) are sent into the cells to do the daily chores, but in actual fact to tempt the priests into engaging in sexual relations. Hidden video cameras are used to film the priest’s reactions, to blackmail him into admitting his connection with other underground priests and force him to join the Patriotic Association,”the missionary news agency said.

Members of the underground Chinese Catholic Church have suffered persecution since the Communist takeover in 1949. Priests come under strong political and psychological pressure to switch their allegiance from the Vatican to the Patriotic Association of Chinese Catholics, which the government set up in 1957.

Fides noted that Chinese emperors used similar tactics against Buddhist monks, sending women to have sex with them and try to induce them to abandon their monasteries. During the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s, the government forced priests and nuns to marry.

Fides said that the police and prostitutes belonging to the special unit in Xushui County sometimes go so far as to take priests to karaoke bars and discos to weaken their defenses.


The girls make frequent visits to the priests’ cells and try to embrace and kiss them, Fides said.”If in that moment you are slow to reject them, the picture taken by the video camera gives the idea that you have gone along,”it quoted a priest as saying.

Priests who resist all temptation are sent to re-education camps, placed under longterm house arrest or returned to local authorities for harsher treatment.

Li was ordained a priest in 1993 for the diocese of Yixian in Hebei Province and since 1997 had been working in Guan County, Fides said. He was arrested on Nov. 15 when four carloads of police staged a 1 a.m. raid on the home of a Catholic layman in Weizhuang. They also confiscated religious books, videos for catechesis (religious education) and a motorbike.

The next day, police arrested six lay leaders of the underground parish and held them for five days until they paid a fine of about $900, or 14 months’ salary for a Chinese worker.

Li was transferred to the special facilities”to change the mind of priests”on Nov. 29, Fides said.

DEA END POLK

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