Beijing - The Da Vinci Code had its world premiere in China on Wednesday, hours before it opened at the Cannes Film Festival, but a state-run Catholic body on Thursday urged people to boycott it as 'insulting.'
The film was scheduled to open in dozens of cinemas across China on Thursday, following the premiere in Beijing, a spokeswoman for the distributor, the China Film Group, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Thwarting rampant piracy in China, where DVDs of Hollywood films are often available before the official release in cinemas, is one of the reasons for opening the film so early and so widely in China, the spokeswoman said.
But the state-run China Patriotic Catholic Association condemned the release of the film and urged followers to boycott it.
'The movie has many details that go against the Catholic teachings or are even insulting,' Liu Bainian, vice-president of the association, told the official Xinhua news agency.
Liu said the film was a 'test of faith' and that Catholics should 'consolidate their belief, abide by the instruction of the church and don't get affected by those fictional things'.
'The association and the Bishops Conference of the Chinese Catholic Church are considering to release a notice warning all the believers not to watch it,' the agency quoted him as saying.
The Jinde Weekly, a magazine sponsored by the Catholic association in the northern province of Hebei, has already posted a letter on its website urging Catholics to boycott the film.
The film, based on Dan Brown's best-selling novel, has 'greatly offended' Christians, it quoted the letter as saying.
'We here call for all the netizens, priests and followers to resist them,' it said.
Brown's most controversial move in the book was to raise the possibility that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and started a bloodline that still exists.
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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