China church leader released from prison after 3-year sentence related to Bibles

BEIJING (AP) - A leader of China's underground Protestant church has been released from a three-year prison term for distributing Bibles and other religious literature without a business license, an overseas monitoring group said.

Pastor Cai Zhuohua returned to his Beijing home in good physical and mental condition, the China Aid Association said in a statement.

The association, based in the U.S. city of Midland, Texas, said Cai had been told not to speak about his prison experience and to report to a local police station once a month.

Cai's pretrial detention appeared to have been counted toward his sentence. He had been detained about 14 months before he was convicted in November 2005.

Cai had been sentenced for ``illegal business practices'' after police searched a warehouse managed by Cai and found more than 200,000 pieces of Christian literature, including Bibles.

China's government-controlled church maintains a monopoly on the printing and distribution of religious literature and other church materials.

The Chinese government only allows worship in churches run by state-monitored religious associations, although millions of Christians risk harassment or worse by gathering in independent church groups, often run out of private homes.

Romanian Orthodox bishop collaborated with the communist-era secret police, council rules

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) _ A Romanian Orthodox bishop was an informant of the communist-era Securitate secret police and was ordered to infiltrate groups of Eastern Rite Catholics, a council studying Securitate archives said.

Andrei Andreicut, bishop for Alba in northwest Romania, was recruited in the 1980s and pressured into signing a written pledge to be an informant under the code name 'Ionica.' The Securitate particularly wanted him to spy on members of the banned Eastern Rite Catholic Church, the state council for studying the Securitate archives said Sept. 13.

The bishop had come from a family of Eastern Rite Catholic believers, who accept the authority of the pope but can follow different rituals than Roman Catholics. Eastern Rite churches were banned in 1948 when the Communists came to power.

Andreicut was coerced into signing a pledge promising to inform or else risk being sent to jail, said Mircea Dinescu, a board member of the council studying the Securitate archives. The bishop wrote informative notes for the Securitate after signing the pledge. One board member called the notes ``harmless.''

Andreicut admitted in his 2002 autobiography that the Securitate forced him to inform on a close friend but said he only wrote ``positive things.''

Faced with the council's announcement, he denied having been a real informant, saying he had been forced into agreeing to spy in 1983, or be sent to prison for allegedly trying to bribe an official, something he denied doing. ``I was a victim,'' he said.

During communism, thousands of priests were imprisoned or sent to labor camps, alongside tens of thousands of other political prisoners. Many signed written pledges promising to be Securitate informants when they were released.