Rome (AsiaNews) – In a world marked by secularism and fundamentalism, protecting religious freedom is the best way to build our societies and guarantee the common good. In so doing, countries that have degenerated into dictatorships can be healed and religions tempted by violence can be inoculated against it. These are some of the ideas on which participants to the international conference that took at Rome's Gregorian University last December 3 agreed.

Titled 'Religious Freedom: The Cornerstone of Human Dignity', the conference was organised by the Embassy of the United States to the Holy See to celebrate the 20th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Washington and Vatican City.

At the outset of the conference, US Ambassador Jim Nicholson pointed out that both the US and the Holy See share the same views about religious freedom, a "fundamental freedom" for US President George W. Bush and the "basis of all other freedoms" according to John Paul II.

Given its importance, the US has made religious freedom a key part of its foreign policy to the extent that failure to defend it can lead to economic sanctions against violators or to actions on behalf of the victims of religious persecution and discrimination.

John Hanford, US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, explained how the US State Department prepares its Annual Report on Religious Freedom accumulating evidence of anti-religious violence and working to improve the situation for believers in places like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, or Cuba.

For his part, Paolo Carozza, a young professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame Law School, showed how important it is for the international community "not to exclude or ignore" religion. Instead, he said religion should be made a "constructive element" in building our society for it is "an essential prerequisite for the dialogue between religions" and a basis to "appeal to reason in pursuing a shared goal".

The most thorough presentation on the issue came from Mgr Giovanni Lajolo, Secretary of the Holy See for Relations with States. In his paper, Mgr Lajolo laid out the full extent of the Holy See's commitment to religious freedom in the world. But this commitment is "not without its difficulties" since religious freedom is something that creates "opposed visions and interpretations".

Citing the 'Aid to the Church in Need' Annual Report, Mgr Lajolo said religious freedom was sadly still a burning issue today. In his view, no state has fully established religious freedom, even those where there is 'sufficient liberty".

The most serious and current challenges to religious freedom are as follows:

a) Since religious freedom includes the right to be present in the public sphere, in a multi-confessional world—Mgr Lajolo was probably referring to Western societies—the separation of state and religion must be such that government authorities are open to cooperating with religious groups rather than trying to marginalise or scorn them.

b) Religious freedom must have an 'institutional' component, that is to say, it must include the right of every religious community to freely organise itself according to its own principles. This said, no religious community can be exempt from respecting fundamental human rights and public order. It must however be said that in China, Vietnam but also in France, religions are controlled by the state on the pretext of preserving public order and health.

c) Religious freedom is independent of any legal requirement to gain government approval. In many countries and regions (Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, central Asia, Middle East, etc.), religious communities have the right to set up their own places of worship only after registering with local Religious Affairs Bureaus. Exerting such prior control does not respect the principle of religious freedom which is a fundamental human right.

d) Religious freedom includes the right to change one's religions. This is especially true in countries where Hinduism and Islam are the dominant religion. Conversion is too often either forbidden by law or made impossible by intolerant religious majorities. Former Muslims in Iran, tribal people in India or former Animists in Africa often risk dying at the hands of their relatives or of fundamentalist religious groups opposed to their conversion.

Mgr Lajolo stressed how important the right to choose one's religion be guaranteed not only on paper but "be also fully enforced in all social relations".

e) Finally, Mgr Lajolo warned against the notion, widespread in Europe, according to which religious freedom is the same as 'tolerance'. Citing the UNESCO's 1995 Declaration, he said that tolerance does not mean "the abandonment or weakening of one's convictions"; it means rather "that one is free to adhere to one's own convictions and accepts that others adhere to theirs".

In some countries, having strong convictions is too often equated with 'being intolerant'. Christian missionary activities and evangelisation are seen as 'intolerant' when all they mean is bearing witness to one's faith.

In his paper, Mgr Lajolo reminded his audience of the Holy See's effort to put anti-Semitism, islamophobia and christophobia as equal forms of anti-religious intolerance . Yet, whilst Muslims could cry foul over attempts to pin the terrorist label on the entire Islamic world after the attacks on September 11 and Jews can continue their long fight against anti-Semitism, too few people have spoken out against christophobia. This hatred of Christianity might be a by-product of the "necessary war against terrorism", but by making Christianity guilty by association with certain aspects of Western civilisation or given policies of Western powers, differences and nuances between them are totally lost.

Among the invited guests, many spoke about their own work in foundations and non governmental organisations in favour of religious freedom, for instance businessmen Frank Hanna III and Deal Hudson; Attilio Tamburrini, director for Italy of Aid to the Church in Need; Joseph K. Grieboski, president of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy.

Fr David M. Jaeger, Franciscan of the Custody of the Holy Land, Fr Bernardo Cervellera of AsiaNews, and Fr Daniele A. Madigan, deputy dean of the Institute for the Study of Religion and Cultures at the Pontifical Gregorian University, spoke respectively on the issue of religious freedom in Israel, China and Nigeria.