A newly-built Catholic church has opened in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, local authorities said on Wednesday.

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, a mock Gothic-style building located in the Wanzhou District of Chongqing, covers 4,460 square meters, a spokesman with the Chongqing Municipal Committee of Ethnic and Religious Affairs said.

Around 7.35 million yuan (US$967,000) was spent on the construction of the church, including 3 million yuan donated by overseas Catholics and 3.25 million yuan by the Chinese central government and the Chongqing municipal government, the spokesman said.

More than 2,000 Catholics attended a ceremony held on June 29, the feast of St Peter and Paul, to mark the completion of the construction.

The church is a reconstruction of a former church which was originally built by French priests in 1908. Local authorities knocked down the old church and began building two new ones in 2000 to make room for the massive Three Gorges Project.

The other church went into use in 2004 but construction of this latest one was delayed due to a lack of funds.

(Xinhua News Agency July 5, 2007)