China gears up for faithful during the Games

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing is setting up sites and training local believers to provide religious services for foreigners attending the Olympic Games, religious officials said on Wednesday.

Large numbers of religious faithful are expected among the athletes, coaches and tourists crowding into the officially atheist nation for the Olympics, opening on August 8.

"Major religions in Beijing are all making preparations to serve the Games," Imam Chen Guangyuan, president of the Islamic Association of China, told reporters in Beijing.

His association had been training volunteers in English and Arabic so that they can help with prayer services for visiting Muslims, Chen said.

"As far as I know, the facilities slated by the Olympic organizers have taken shape," he said on the sidelines of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to parliament currently meeting in Beijing.

China is keen to use the international attention on the Beijing Olympics to promote its economic and social successes and growing openness, including in religion.

Fu Xianwei, president of the official Three-self Patriotic Movement Committee for Protestant churches, said Christians in Beijing and other parts of the country were also undergoing language training for the Games.

The Catholic community had been doing the same and would hold a mass to pray for the success of the Games on the 100-day countdown, said Liu Bainian, vice chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

The Beijing organizers of the Games had responded "positively" to his suggestion that Bibles should be placed in Christian Olympic athletes' rooms, Liu said.

The Communist Party used to attack home-grown religions as superstition and foreign ones as subversive, but it has recently said it wants religion to play a positive role in promoting social harmony.

(Reporting by Guo Shipeng; Editing by Alex Richardson)