VATICAN CITY (AP) -- China has detained dozens of bishops and priests loyal to Pope John Paul II and is closely watching many more as part of its efforts to weaken the underground Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican's missionary news agency said Wednesday. The news agency Fides released the names of 33 bishops and priests either detained or being kept under strict police surveillance and forbidden to worship. It said about 20 more priests, whose names were not known, also were being detained.
"The (Chinese) leadership has never given up its idea that religious freedom can only be a controlled semi-freedom," the news agency said, denouncing what it called "abuses and imbalances" in China.
Some of the bishops and priests have been arrested "on no charges, and disappeared ever since," it said.
Chinese officials in Beijing and Rome were unavailable for comment Wednesday, with all government offices closed for the lunar new year.
China has a state-sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association that does not recognize papal authority. Millions of Chinese Catholics faithful to the Vatican worship in underground churches, where they risk arrest. Church leaders have sometimes been imprisoned for years.
The Vatican and China broke formal relations in 1951, as China's communist rulers kicked missionaries out of the country and forced Roman Catholics to sever ties with Rome.
Fides also accused the European Union and the United States of being sympathetic to China "because of its enormous market and its support for the war on terror."
"In this context, human and political rights are the last worry," Fides said.
The pope appealed to Beijing to October to normalize relations. China has said it was studying the appeal but it demands that the Holy See sever relations with Taiwan and pledge not to interfere in China's internal affairs.