TIANJIN, China, April 1, Reuters - "Come in and have a look." The welcoming sign on the gates of a ramshackle building with metal walls off a highway near this industrial city in northern China masks a grim reality: this is an underground Catholic church barely tolerated by Communist Party authorities.
Inside, a 30-year-old priest tells hundreds of Catholics, some sitting cross-legged on the floor because the pews are full, that he had just visited a parishioner, diagnosed with cancer years ago and told he was soon going to die. "But because of his faith, he is still alive and he told me how important believing was, how it kept him going," the priest says.
