Beijing, China, Jul 2, 2007 / 06:35 am
Several Catholic websites that are housed in mainland China were forced by the government to remove the Pope’s letter to the Catholics in China from their website, reports UCA News.
As of today, some sites still have the full 19,763 Chinese character text, but these are mostly all run by Catholics that are “underground.”
At 6:00 p.m. Beijing time on the day that the letter was issued, several mainland Catholic websites had already been forced to substitute a simplified version of the letter for the full length one they had published only hours earlier.
A priest in charge of such a website registered with the government told UCA News on July 2 he felt helpless because he strongly believes that "China church websites should publish the pope's letter."