No nation has perfect religious freedom record, Vatican official says

Published: 2004-12-03

ROME (CNS) -- Perfect religious freedom does not exist in any country in the world, said Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, the Vatican's foreign minister. "Even in states in which the right to religious freedom is taken very seriously," he said, perfection is missing, often because a concern for church-state separation leads to penalizing religious activity in the public sphere. Archbishop Lajolo was the keynote speaker at a Dec. 3 conference in Rome sponsored by the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican. While the conference focused on major violations of religious freedom around the world, particularly in China and the Middle East, Archbishop Lajolo said limits on religious freedom exist almost everywhere. For instance, he said, government and taxation policies may limit the rights of parents to choose a religious education for their children or may penalize the charitable work of the church by not recognizing its nonprofit status. Attempts to ban religiously motivated positions from public policy debates are also infringements on religious freedom, he said. Archbishop Lajolo and other speakers at the conference also voiced concern about the increasing threats to Christians in Iraq and in other countries with a Muslim majority following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

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