CIZHONG, China--The Tibetan Catholic Church in Cizhong, a Christian enclave on the threshold of the Himalayas, has seen its Easter services curbed after anti-Chinese riots in Lhasa caused the region's deadliest tensions in two decades.

As a result, this tiny community of less than 1,000 souls located amid picturesque mountains in an overwhelmingly Buddhist area has been affected by the recent unrest where it matters the most for them -- religion.

Easter Sunday is the most important day for the congregation at Cizhong's nearly 100-year-old church due to the similarities between the resurrection of Christ and the reincarnation beliefs of Tibetan Buddhism, locals here said.

"The resurrection of Christ has long been the most attractive aspect of the Tibetan Catholics that live here," said Francis Fang Jicuo, a devout Tibetan Catholic who has practiced his faith here for most of his 80-year-old life.

This Easter has been especially important as Father Yao Fei, a short bespectacled ethnic Mongolian in his late 30s, only arrived in Cizhong in February.

This made him the first permanent priest to live here since French clergymen were expelled shortly after communist China was established in 1949.

Since then, Catholic priests were only periodically dispatched to Cizhong for special occasions such as Christmas and Easter, Fang said.

Sunday's service was to be Yao's first in Cizhong church, built in 1910, nearly 50 years after Catholicism was introduced to the region by French and Swiss missionaries.

However, following the deadly March 14 riots in Lhasa, police from Diqing Tibetan prefecture, in the northwest of Yunnan province, told church officials to restrict Easter services to fewer than 100 people.

They did not say why, but it came rights on the heels of the worst violence to hit Tibet in nearly 20 years.

China said 18 innocent civilians and one police officer were killed in March 14 rioting in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.

Tibet's government-in-exile in the Indian hill town of Dharamshala has put the toll from a week of unrest across the Himalayan region and neighbouring provinces at 99.

"We are only expecting about 80 followers from (Cizhong) village to attend Easter services as the worshippers from other villages will not be allowed to come," Yao told AFP on Good Friday.

Sitting at 2,000 meters (6,600 feet) above sea-level along the Lancang river -- better known as the Mekong -- Cizhong is only 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the border of China's Tibetan Autonomous Region.

Yao said the Catholic Church here faces similar difficulties in developing and expanding in China as the Buddhist faith, adding he hoped to work with local Buddhists in Diqing to better help religion serve society.

The communist government administers both the Catholic and Buddhist faiths in China, and in similar fashions, Beijing refuses to deal directly with both the Vatican and the Tibetan exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, he said.

At the same time, the communist government has acknowledged that following 20 years of booming economic growth, material wealth alone cannot fulfil the spiritual needs of the Chinese people, Yao said.

"Democracy and religion are both important to solving the problems of society. Everyone recognizes this," he said.

"If social problems cannot be resolved through democracy and religion, then chaos will rule in society."

Educated at the Catholic seminary in Beijing, Yao is originally from northern China's Inner Mongolia region and has previously worked for China's Catholic Church in the southeast province of Fujian.

In Cizhong, he hopes to cooperate with the 80-year-old Francis and the other Tibetan families that have been Catholic for generations to help spread the religious faith to others in this rural and sparsely populated region.

"My father worked at this church with Father Andre who came here from France in the 1920s," Francis said.

"There have been six priests at this church and all have eaten bitterness to come here to teach us the love and the benevolence of the Lord. We are happy to have Father Yao, the first priest to come to Cizhong from China."