Vatican City, Jun 25, 2018 / 01:28 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With religious persecution on the rise in many parts of the world, Church leaders and diplomats called for legal and cultural solutions to protect religious minorities.
Msgr. Khaled Akaseh, an official of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, said at a June 25 conference in Rome that religious freedom is the “cornerstone of human rights.” Defending this freedom, he said, will require a change in mentality from oppressive groups and governments who deny the inherent dignity of those who practice different religions.
At the conference, a representative from the Lebanese embassy to the Holy See stressed the need to protect minorities in their home countries rather than allowing a diaspora of religious minorities who flee persecution in the Middle East to start new lives abroad.
“The West doesn’t need our minorities, we need them,” he said, adding that the focus “should be keeping minorities where they are” while also trying to make the life of refugees better. The solution, he said, “is not in the West, it’s in the East.”
In comments to journalists, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Oriental Churches, sympathized with the need for greater protections for religious minorities at home.
In some cases, “you can’t get certain positions at work, you can’t have certain positions because you are not from the majority,” he said. To counter this, “minorities should be recognized and respected” through equal citizenship before the law, not treated as second-class citizens.
Sandri spoke at a half-day symposium titled “Defending International Religious Freedom: Partnership and Action,” which was organized by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See in collaboration with papal charity organization Aid to the Church in Need and the community of Sant’Egidio, an ecclesial movement known for its work with migrants and refugees.
In remarks during the event, U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Callista Gingrich pointed to instances of religious persecution happening around the world, saying “it’s a dangerous time to be a person of faith.”
“We are at a critical moment. We can and must do more,” she said, and voiced the need for greater cooperation on the part of international leaders, saying “governments, civil society, faith groups, and individuals must work together to advance religious freedom and to strengthen peace, stability, and security throughout the world.”
“Global crises require global solutions. We must come together to confront and counter those who practice, enable, or export religious persecution or violent extremism,” she said, adding that only through cooperation and understanding will it be possible to “safeguard the human right of religious freedom for all those seeking to live their lives freely and in accordance with their faith.”
Cardinal-elect Joseph Coutts of Karachi, Pakistan, warned that although religious freedom was enshrined in his country’s 1947 founding documents, it has slowly been eroded and replaced with strict restrictions on religion.
He pointed to the nation’s harsh anti-blasphemy law, which imposes strict punishment – typically the death penalty – on those who desecrate the Quran or who defame or insult Muhammad.
The law is misused, he said, in cases such as that of Asia Bibi, a mother of five who was accused by a neighbor of insulting the prophet Mohammed in 2009, and is currently on death row.
Most people know “this is a cooked-up case,” Coutts said, but they are afraid to take action because religious emotion runs so high, and many people who have defended Christians have ended up dead.
He also cautioned that a new form of Islam has crept into Pakistan, justifying practices forbidden by traditional Islam, such as suicide bombings.
“Our government is not strong enough to control the kind of extremism that has developed in our country,” he said, noting that both Christians and Muslims who do not share the extremist interpretation of Islam are suffering.
Salwa Kahalaf Rasho, a Yazidi woman from Iraq, shared her story of capture and abuse during the 2014 ISIS attacks against the Yazidi people in the country – the latest of more than 70 “genocidal campaigns” her people have suffered throughout their history.
“They [ISIS fighters] killed thousands of Yazidi men in the most horrific ways. As a result, about 60 mass graves of has been found in my hometown Sinjar. More than 6000 women and girls were kidnapped, including me and many of my relatives,” Rasho said.
“We have been subjected to all types of sexual and physical abuse and violence. We were sold in slave markets. We were objects to be bought and purchased, alongside enduring continuous beatings and torture.”
After eight months of captivity, Rasho escaped and was able to move to Germany. But there are still some 3,000 Yazidi women missing, she said, stressing the need for international efforts to rescue these women.
She also called for the protection of Yazidi refugees and of minority areas in Iraq and Syria, the preservation of mass graves in Sinjar as evidence of genocide, cooperation with the U.N. team investigating Islamic State crimes in Iraq, and reconstruction efforts aimed at helping people return to their homes.
“These steps are the only way of preserving the existence of minorities in the region, especially Yazidi and Christians,” she said. “If this action is not taken, our existence, identity and culture will be wiped out- fulfilling the aim of the Islamic State.”
Support should also be given to the displaced, she said, noting that refugees often face both physical and mental health risks, and “suicide rates are on the rise.”
Also offering a testimony was aid worker Ziear Khan, who has worked with Rohingya Muslims in Burma since 2008 through the British development and relief charity Human Appeal.
The Rohingya, an ethnic minority in Burma, are not recognized by the state and have faced increased persecution in their homeland since 2012. They have been described “as the most persecuted group in the world right now,” Khan said.
He recounted the stories of women and children whose family members were brutally killed before their eyes, leaving them abandoned and traumatized.
Khan also called for action, specifically sanctions on trade with Burma until the crisis is addressed.
“I think about the lessons we need to learn. I think about Rwanda, I think of Bosnia and the Holocaust,” he said, adding that “I would hate to be silent on the day I’m questioned by my Lord when these atrocities were taking place, when all these people were being killed.”
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Are there footnotes…a sort of wide-angle symphony of other “consonance[s]” with quite different (!) instrumentalists such as Cardinal Kasper, Frs. Spadaro and Martin, S.J., and take-no-notes “journalist” Scalfari–but also St. John Paul II whose writings are fully consonant with then-cardinal Ratzinger’s hand (Faith and Reason, Veritatis Splendor)?
And, are we to look forward to a timely set of many new sheet-music harmonizations from the 19 likely papabili identified in Edward Pentin’s new book: The Next Pope? All on the same page as Benedict, surely. Or, at least, a case still might be made that really good music includes the silences between the notes (dubia!).
Or, instead, is “solemn” “spiritual consonance” now one thing while un-solemn and disconnected (?) praxis is another? Only a “diversity of style of communication”–what ever happened to Cardinal Parolin’s “paradigm shift”?
Perplexed! “Parolin also described the ‘lively affection’ that exists between the pope and the pope emeritus, quoting Benedict as saying to Francis on June 28, 2016: ‘Your goodness, evident from the moment of your election, has continually impressed me, and greatly sustains my interior life. The Vatican Gardens, even for all their beauty, are not my true home: my true home is your goodness’”. I’m not a devotee of Magic, or magical transformation. But somewhat knowledgeable of the craft. Is Cardinal Parolin’s account Witchful thinking? Has the man whose responsible for permission to China’s Communist Party to garrote the Catholic Church, who wrongly announced inclusion of the Argentine Papal letters into the Acta Apostolicae Sedis makes the ‘doctrine’ in Amoris, definitive and binding, now wondrously converted to the sound doctrinal legacy of Benedict? Or is something eerie afoot? Just the mention of the Gardens. The place where Pachamamma was reverenced. Presided by His Goodness. Has someone cast a spell over the aging Pope Emeritus [whatever that means, I don’t wish to reignite that mute argument]. Perhaps some powdery substance [wasn’t there a bag or two of that stuff at the enshrinement ceremony?] quietly sprinkled over his venerable resting head? La tua bontà è usata come un complimento. Actually it’s used in Italy as a compliment. Has Benedict fallen back on his rent? Has he used the Italian trick of exaggerated compliment [Benedict when the more livelier Ratzinger used to motor around Rome on his Vespa, often convivially dining at a pizzeria near the Vatican]? At any rate wanting for comfort by compliments so gravely put, such as your goodness is my true home virtually in veneration , I wonder.