Religious freedom is not only a fundamental and essential human right, “it is also a pathway to truth and deeper communion with God and neighbour,” Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said yesterday. Source: CNS.
However, religious freedom is severely restricted in 62 of the world’s 196 countries, affecting around 5.4 billion people; “in other words, almost two-thirds of the world’s population lives in countries where serious violations of religious freedom take place,” the cardinal said.
Cardinal Parolin was citing information contained in the 2025 Religious Freedom Report compiled by the papal foundation Aid to the Church in Need and released yesterday during a conference at Rome’s Augustinianum Patristic Institute.
The fact that the 2025 report runs to 1248 pages, the largest in its 25-year history, “indicates that violations of religious freedom are increasing year on year,” the cardinal said.
The report, covering the period of January 1, 2023, to December 31, 2024, found that “grave and systemic violations, including violence, arrest and repression, affect more than 4.1 billion people in nations such as China, India, Nigeria and North Korea”.
Aid to the Church in Need listed another 38 countries – including Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Turkey and Vietnam – as nations where “religious discrimination” is common.
The foundation said that in those countries “religious groups face systematic restrictions on worship, expression and legal equality. While not subject to violent repression, discrimination often results in marginalisation and legal inequality.”
Speaking at the presentation of the report, Cardinal Parolin focused on the Catholic Church’s support for the religious freedom of all people, no matter their faith, and on the upcoming 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom.
The council’s support for religious liberty was “a call to action based on the council’s belief that God himself has made known to mankind the way in which men are to serve him and thus be saved in Christ,” the cardinal said.
And while all people have a “moral obligation” to seek the truth, Cardinal Parolin said, no one can be compelled to do so.
“One must and can only respond in one way: freely, that is to say, out of love, with love, not by force, because Christianity is love,” he said.
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Attacks on religious liberty increase, say cardinal, papal foundation (By Cindy Wooden, CNS)
