A senior Vatican official has strongly defended religious freedom at a conference on in Slovakia. He also criticised Uganda’s new law outlawing homosexual acts.
On the subject of religious freedom, Cardinal Peter Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace said: “It is important to preserve and defend religious freedom because it concerns “each person’s freedom to live according to their own deeper understanding of the truth.” He added that “freedom of religion is inseparable from freedom of thought and conscience”.
But the Cardinal said that the freedom was not well protected. “At present, Christians are the religious group which suffers persecution in the largest number of countries on account of its faith,” a situation that “constitutes a grave violation of human rights.” He appealed to all governments to protect the rights of their citizens, “whatever their religion.”
Cardinal Turkson said that the Church “affirms the foundation of fundamental human rights in human dignity and therefore defends the universal character of these basic rights.” But he criticised attempts to redefine what was meant by “human rights.”
“(An example of this) is the use of the term “gender” to suggest that sex is not biologically grounded as male and female but is simply a social construct or produced by what individuals think or feel they are…. Related to this is the suggestion that marriage could somehow be redefined, despite the fact that marriage is, by nature, between one man and one woman for their mutual love and increase of the human family, as affirmed in international law. Such positions distort reality because they attempt to rewrite human nature, which ‘de natura’ cannot be rewritten.”
At the same conference, Cardinal Turkson condemned Uganda’s anti-gay law and called for the severe penalties it legislates for to be repealed.
According to The Catholic Herald he said that “homosexuals are not criminals” and shouldn’t be sentenced to prison.