Chinese Catholics

As one example, CCP officials prevented hundreds of underground Catholics in China from celebrating the Feast of the Assumption on August 15, one of the most important feasts in the Catholic liturgical calendar. For Chinese Catholics, the Assumption is considered one of the major celebrations along with Christmas and Easter, and all the faithful gather in their parish churches on these days for solemn liturgical celebrations.
As Breitbart News reported in March, early on in the pandemic Beijing used the crisis as an excuse to tighten its grip on religious activities, bulldozing some churches and placing others under heavy surveillance.

In February, the Religious Affairs Bureau of the northeastern province of Jilin issued a document calling on authorities to “rectify” house churches, which are considered illegal by the government. The document instructed local officials to investigate house churches and collect information on “when they were established, who is in charge of them, and how large the congregations are” as a first step to shutting them down altogether, stated a report by Bitter Winter.

“China is now holding itself up as a model for fighting the coronavirus. But fighting the pandemic hasn’t stopped communist officials from persecuting Christians,” Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for the nonprofit group Voice of the Martyrs (VOM), said at the time. Chinese officials issued orders that effectively banned “unregistered” religious services on the grounds of public health.