China Calls Vatican 'Unreasonable' and 'Rude'

China said on Monday the Vatican's recent excommunication of two Chinese bishops who were ordained without papal approval was "unreasonable" and "rude," in a sign of escalating tensions between the Vatican and Beijing.

In the government's first response to the Vatican's recent denunciations of the ordinations by China's state-sanctioned Catholic church, the State Bureau of Religious Affairs said it was "greatly concerned" about the excommunication of Joseph Huang Bingzhang and Lei Shiyin.