Hanoi – Authorities in central Vietnam have moved a dissident Catholic priest, detained in his office since last week, to another diocese, a church official said Sunday.
Local government officials in Thua Thien-Hue province moved Father Nguyen Van Ly, 59, to another church after he had been detained in his office in Hue city in the wake of a police raid last Sunday in which papers and computers were seized, a Catholic bishop in the province said.
“Father Ly was forced by local authorities to move to Ben Cui Church in Phong Dien district yesterday afternoon,” the bishop, who requested anonymity, said by telephone Sunday.
Local authorities in Hue could not be contacted for comment Sunday.
The raid and Father Ly’s detention came less than a month after Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung met with Pope Benedict XVI in a groundbreaking audience.
A Vietnamese government spokesman, Le Dung, on Friday denied that Father Ly, who has spent 14 years in prison since 1983, was under arrest and declined to answer questions on the issue.
Father Ly was being investigated on suspicion of “acts of inciting and gathering some elements against the authority,” he added.
Vietnam has recently expressed interest in establishing formal diplomatic ties with the Holy See, which were severed in 1975 after the country was united under communist rule.
Relations between the Vatican and Hanoi were strained under the term of Pope John Paul II, who was known for his hard-line stance against communist regimes’ insistence on state control of church affairs.