Pope’s Quiet Coup: Drawing Rival Chinese Catholics : Diplomacy: Manila visit attracts sanctioned and underground faithful, signaling thaw between Vatican and Beijing.

Pope John Paul II’s Asian sojourn divided into two happy pieces Friday: noisy popular adulation on the streets and quiet diplomatic triumph behind the scenes.

Anonymously sheltered among huge crowds celebrating their church’s World Youth Day with the visiting Pope are small groups of Roman Catholics from China, Vatican officials say.

Some represent an official “patriotic” church sanctioned by Beijing, and others belong to a faith loyal to the Vatican that had been kept alive underground for nearly half a century in the face of government persecution.

The presence of the two groups--perhaps 100 people in all--signals a major warming between custodians of one of the world’s largest religions and Communist rulers of the world’s most populous nation.

Coping with jet lag on his first full day in Asia, the 74-year-old pontiff was strong-voiced and seemed to be feeling well in a reduced round of appearances Friday.

He stood unaided on his healing right leg, broken in a fall last year, for more than an hour to greet youth leaders from around the world in ceremonies at the 33,000-student University of Santo Tomas, the world’s largest Catholic university.

“Enormous tasks lie before the youth of the world, especially before the Catholic youth of the Philippines, of Asia and the Far East, on the eve of the third millennium,” John Paul said in a Mass homily.

Today the Pope will say an outdoor Mass in downtown Manila. This evening, he will kick off Sunday’s climactic Youth Day celebration with a prayer vigil for young people who have come from around the world for a biennial festival like one held in Denver in 1993.

Before the vigil, John Paul will meet this afternoon with officials of the church’s Radio Veritas, which will transmit a prerecorded papal message of peace and greeting in English to the people of China, followed by a Mandarin translation.

Along with larger delegations of Catholics from Taiwan, two dozen to three dozen representatives of China’s Catholic Patriotic Assn. are in Manila for the Youth Day celebrations. The Vatican said Friday that it expected a handful of priests among them to celebrate Mass with the Pope today or Sunday.

The association, established in the 1950s and still government-monitored, does not acknowledge papal authority, appoints its own bishops and is not associated with the Vatican. Papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro told reporters Friday, though, that association priests who recite a profession of faith in Catholicism and papal religious authority could join the Pope in celebrating Mass.

There are about 3 million members of China’s official church, and Vatican specialists say that as many as 5 million other Chinese remain faithful to Rome as members of an underground church.

Virtually every country in Asia, even those with few Catholics, have delegates at Youth Day. With Manila’s Cardinal Jaime Sin, an ethnic Chinese, acting as a broker between the Holy See and Beijing, delegates from both the underground church and the association are representing China, Navarro said.

The Vatican does not maintain relations with Beijing but staffs its nunciature in Taiwan at a low level. China requires countries to break with Taiwan before it will agree to open relations.

Security is being stepped up at each of the Pope’s scheduled stops on this Asian tour, and Philippine Defense Secretary Renato de Villa said Friday that two people have been arrested in an alleged plot against the pontiff.