China’s Catholics mark funeral as state scornful

FROM Beijing’s old official churches to underground congregations in the countryside, China’s Catholics were marking the burial of Pope John Paul II despite an official blackout on the ceremony.

Except for a terse, two-sentence report carried by state-run Xinhua news agency and China Central Television’s evening news, government-controlled media virtually paid no attention to the funeral.

“I suspect people will be praying for the pope in our regular mass. We’re sad as he was a great person,” said a member of an underground church in Baoding city, a hotspot of unofficial Catholicism in northern Hebei province 150km south-west of Beijing.