Harare — Catholic priests are facing arrest and torture by President Robert Mugabe's secret police masquerading as Mass goers.

The dictator's instruments of repression have turned their attention to the Church, branding it an enemy of the state, according to The Tablet, a Catholic weekly newsletter.

In a pastoral letter at the beginning of this year the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Zimbabwe said, "Corruption is a cancer destroying our nation". The bishops urged the country's political parties to engage in a serious discussion about the state of the nation, warning that the alternative was to allow Zimbabwe to "continue to be dogged by violence, political intolerance, injustice, rigging of elections, fear, and deception."

According to The Tablet, it is for messages such as this that the Church is currently paying a heavy price, with the Government of Zimbabwe now treating it as one of its major internal enemies.

Speaking anonymously to The Tablet for fear of arrest and torture, a priest revealed how intimidation of celebrants at Mass has become the norm through the presence in their congregations of secret police loyal to the dictator Robert Mugabe and his party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF).

He gave the example of a peace service at the Church of the Nazarene in the high-density Glen Norah suburb of Harare , the capital's suburbs are divided into the formerly white "low-density" suburbs and the old "high-density" African townships, that was broken up by riot police.

The cleric said that priests are today routinely subjected to arbitrary arrest and questioning. He himself feels hindered and censored by the constant presence of secret service personnel in his congregation who report back on his homilies.

"There's no freedom of speech. You preach that people are hungry and the moment you say people are hungry those in authority feel attacked. So you are an enemy," he said. "Zimbabwe has become a police state," the cleric added.

He said that as a result, priests in Zimbabwe "don't have any freedom to preach the Word as we would want to, even within the Church because you never know what kind of visit you may get after Mass. You know that the secret police are attending and the moment you finish, things happen."

The priest also revealed that their phones are tapped. "When you talk you can actually hear someone interfering! We know our internet lines are tapped all the time and so sending messages outside is very dangerous."

Even wearing a Roman collar is extremely dangerous, the cleric told The Tablet.

"The moment the authorities know you are a priest you are labeled an enemy". A few weeks ago two priests were imprisoned and were humiliated by being forced to undress before female police officers," he said.

"We live in fear," he said adding that "Mugabe is no longer in charge, it is the army and the police intelligence who are running the affairs of the country and they decide whatever they want."

Mugabe, who has dominated the political scene in Zimbabwe for more than three decades, now wants national elections brought forward, a move church leaders and opposition parties are against.

Early elections would undermine, they say, the Global Political Agreement (GPA) that was agreed between Zanu-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, in September 2008.

By Staff reporter and agencies