Vatican delegation in Beijing amid strains -report

VATICAN CITY, June 27 (Reuters) A Vatican delegation is meeting government officials in Beijing this week amid strains over China's installation of bishops without the Catholic Church's approval, a religious news agency said today.

Asianews said Archbishop Claudio Celli is heading the delegation, which arrived on Sunday for a week-long visit to meet ''various figures'' of the Chinese government.

The Vatican would not comment on the report, spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said.

Relations between the Vatican and Beijing reached a new low last month when Pope Benedict censured China publicly for installing two bishops without the Holy See's approval.

The Pope called it ''a grave violation of religious freedom''.

China, which broke links with the Vatican in the 1950s after expelling foreign clergy, refuses to allow Catholics to recognise the authority of the Pope.

Instead, Chinese Catholics must belong to a state-backed church called the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

In recent years the two sides had reached a tacit agreement that only priests in the state-backed church with a favourable attitude toward the Vatican be elevated to bishop, an agreement that appears to have been eroded by the latest appointments.

Asianews, citing unidentified sources in Beijing, Hong Kong and Rome, said analysts were divided over the significance of the current visit.

''The Vatican does not have high hopes as to what it can achieve, maintaining that it is nevertheless absolutely necessary to keep doors open,'' it said.

Last week, Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun said Vatican officials had visited Beijing for closed-door talks on normalising ties. But he would not say if the envoys had already left Beijing, and declined to give details about the talks.

The Vatican estimates that about 8 million Chinese Catholics worship in ''underground churches'' not recognised by the government, compared with some 5 million who belong to the state-controlled church.

REUTERS SHB KN1837