A priest in China's underground Roman Catholic church was detained after saying a secret Christmas Mass, a U.S. religious activist said Wednesday.
The Rev. Dong Yingmu, 37, was picked up in Baoding, a city in the central province of Hubei with a large underground church, said Joseph Kung, president of the Cardinal Kung Foundation.
Kung said Dong was detained the week of Dec. 23, though he didn't know the date. Kung said the priest has been transferred to a prison in Hubei.
"He had finished one secret Mass and was on his way to conduct another when the police detained him," Kung said by telephone from Stamford, Connecticut.
An official of the Baoding Religious Affairs Bureau denied that Dong had been detained. Officials contacted by telephone at the prison cited by Kung's group and a nearby jail denied that anyone by Dong's name had been detained.
"We've never heard of this case. No such things happened," said the religious affairs official, who wouldn't 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.
Numerous detentions of underground priests have been reported in Baoding, where Kung said the unofficial Catholic church has as many as 100,000 members.
The city's underground Catholic bishop and auxiliary bishop have not been seen since police detained them in 1997 and 1996, respectively, according to the foundation.
It said nine underground priests in Baoding are in detention or serving sentences of up to three years in labor camps.
Nationwide, the Vatican says more than 50 underground Chinese Catholic bishops or priests have been detained or live under house arrest or police surveillance.