WASHINGTON (CNS) — Thousands of Catholics marched on Vietnamese streets July 26 to protest the beating of two Catholic priests and the detainment of seven Catholics after a violent police raid at a disputed church site.

In a series of coordinated marches throughout the Vinh Diocese, about 500,000 people gathered to demand the release of the seven marchers who were arrested July 20 at the site of Tam Toa, a parish destroyed by U.S. bombers during the Vietnam War, and to call for an end of police attacks on Catholics, according to news reports.

The seven Catholics were taken into custody after trying to erect a cross and other religious symbols at the ruins of the church, reports said. The government maintains that the Tam Toa church is national property and was dedicated as a war memorial in the late 1990s.

Two priests were beaten July 26 in the central city of Dong Hoi, about 310 miles south of Hanoi, in the Vinh Diocese. Both were hospitalized in critical condition. Reports said one priest, Father Paul Nguyen Dinh Phu, was traveling to a march at Tam Toa when he was attacked by police. The second, Father Peter Nguyen The Binh, pastor of a parish near Dong Hoi, was attacked hours later when he tried to visit his fellow cleric in the hospital.