The Wider Image: Vatican deal a new trial for a Catholic village in China
Believers pray at the government-sanctioned Catholic church during a mass on Palm Sunday in Youtong village. In December 2016, Pei said that Beijing would have to change its attitude towards the Vatican before any deal could work. But Pei, who spent four years in a labour camp after the government raided his church in 1989, appeared to be under pressure from authorities when Reuters recently visited him at home. Pei, who still gives mass and takes confession, was accompanied by a heavyset man, who declined to identify himself, wearing a belt with a police emblem buckle. The man said Pei could not hear well enough to do an interview, ushering him away. The same man then followed Reuters journalists for the next 24 hours, joined intermittently by others in as many five vehicles, underscoring the sensitivity of the situation.
REUTERS/Damir Sagolj