Democratic Republic of Congo's powerful Catholic Church said the provisional result of December's presidential election, naming opposition candidate Felix Tshisekedi as winner, does not reflect the data its observers collected from polling stations.

"We see that the result of the presidential election as published by CENI (the electoral commission) does not correspond with the data collected by our observer mission from polling stations and counting centres," said Father Donatien Nshole, spokesman for CENCO, which represents the country's Catholic bishops.