CASTELGANDOLFO, Italy - The Vatican on Monday asked Washington to try and persuade China to set up a direct line of communications with the Holy See, which the communist government does not recognise, a Vatican source said.
The source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the request was made during a meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano and their aides.
"Given the United States' privileged position in relations with China, both economic and political, Sodano asked Bush to help convince China to open up a channel of communications with the Vatican," the official source said.
The meeting included Bush and his national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on the U.S. side and Sodano and Foreign Minister Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran on the Vatican side.
It took place after Bush held private talks with Pope John Paul II at his summer residence south of Rome.
Briefing reporters later, Rice said Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell had raised the issue of Catholic bishops who have been arrested in China.
"The president is going to raise the issue with the Chinese. He is more than happy to raise the issue of religious freedom as well as issues as to how relations between the Vatican and China might be made better," she said.
Beijing forbids its Catholics from recognising the Pope and forces them to join a government-backed "patriotic" church, which has about four million members.
The Vatican says eight million Chinese are loyal to the Pope and worship in secret.
Beijing, which has often accused the Vatican of interfering in its internal affairs, says the Holy See must first sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan before relations can be normalised.
Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province.
Last September, a Catholic prelate visiting China lodged what he called an energetic protest with authorities over a wave of arrests of Catholic faithful and bishops loyal to the Pope.
According to the U.S.-based Cardinal Kung Foundation, there is widespread persecution of the Catholic Church in China.
One of the bishops detained last September was an 81-year-old prelate who had spent a total of 30 years in jail.
Relations between Beijing and the Vatican hit a new low in October when the Pope canonised 120 martyrs, including Chinese and Western missionaries, killed in China between 1648 and 1930.
China said at the time that the martyrs were "evil-doing sinners" and agents of colonialism.
After the canonisation, the Pope extended an olive branch to China by apologising for any errors committed by Western missionaries during colonial times.