Mgr. Tomasi: “Intolerance towards Christians is growing”

Rome (Vatican Insider) — “Religious intolerance is increasing: sometimes it is the State that limits and sometimes oppresses the freedom of faithful, other times it is society, perhaps through the connivance of the judicial system or political leaders that literally persecutes communities of faithful, be it Christians or other religious minorities.” 

These were the warning bells sent out on Vatican Radio by Mgr. Silvano Silvano Tomasi, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in Geneva, who at the end of the Rimini Meeting recalled that “Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world today.”

Tomasi explained that “this is a widespread phenomenon” witnessed in Nigeria, Somalia, Iraq and India but it takes on different forms, in the West as well. “In western culture - the prelate pointed out - the strategy is to say or to think that religion is a hindrance to individual freedom. But we forget that these States or cultural or social groups within a country that wish to eliminate any public role religion may play, violate in this way the rights of believers.”

“So we are faced with the opposite situation to that which is being described: it is not religious groups that prevent people from exercising their rights but the attitude of the public that limits the rights of those who believe or have a religious faith. It is quite a subtle but efficient strategy because in the end it prevents Christian values from influencing public decisions.”