Scottish Catholic Observer

Prime Minister David Cameron has said British overseas aid decisions should take into account persecution against Christians.

Mr Cameron’s comments this week were welcomed by the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, that helps persecuted Christians around the world, as Pope Benedict XVI again called for states around the world to guarantee the free exercise of religious worship.

David Cameron told the BBC on Sunday that: “British aid should have more strings attached in terms of do you persecute people for their faith or their Christianity or do you persecute people for their sexuality.”

Last Wednesday Mr Cameron said at Prime Minister’s Questions that ‘how people are treating’ Christians and homosexuals would have an impact on UK aid decisions.

Mr Cameron was responding to a question from Jeffery Donaldson MP who had quoted former Conservative front-bencher Ann Widdecombe speech at Aid to the Church in Need’s Westminster event last month where she said ‘you stand a better chance of earnest representation if you a hedgehog’ than if you are a Christian.

Crucial step forward

Neville Kyrke-Smith of Aid to the Church in Need has described Mr Cameron’s comments on the persecution of Christians as ‘a crucial step forward’ in the struggle to combat religious hatred.

“We welcome the Government’s emphasis on the importance of tying human rights into aid,” Mr Kyrke-Smith said. “That the Prime Minister should publicly single out treatment of Christians as a factor in decisions on UK aid is an important step forward.”

Mr Kyrke-Smith added that he believed that when the UK is setting aid budgets religious freedom ‘should always be highlighted and discussed’.

“ACN agrees that the persecution of homosexuals is totally unacceptable—as is the persecution of Christians and people of other faiths,” he said. “In response, rather than necessarily reducing aid, the money should be re-directed away from governments with a poor track record on human rights.”

Mr Kyrke-Smith also said that a good human rights’ record should not be seen as the ‘pre-condition’ for a government to receive UK aid but that concerns about religious hatred should be ‘openly discussed and seriously taken into consideration’.

“We are asked by Pope Benedict XVI to keep Christianity in the public square,” he said. “We are betraying our Christian heritage and letting our Christian brothers and sisters down unless we raise human rights and religious freedom issues.”

Free exercise of worship

Pope Benedict again raised the issue of importance of religious freedom in the modern world when he met with the new Brazilian ambassador to the Vatican yesterday.

The Holy Father welcomed Almir Franco de Sá Barbuda, the new ambassador to the Holy See, to the Vatican on Monday and highlighted the need to recognise ‘that a healthy secularism should not consider religion a mere human feeling which can be relegated to the private sphere, but as a reality which is not only organised in a visible structure, but which much be recognised by the public community.’

Referencing the concordat signed between Brazil and the Holy See in 2008, the Pope said: “Far from being a source of privileges for the Church or an affront to the secularism of the state, [the agreement] only tries to give an official character and legal recognition to the independence and collaboration between the two entities.”

The Holy Father said countries throughout the world must guarantee the free exercise of worship, as well as the freedom of religious organisations to conduct cultural, educational, and charitable work.

—ACN’s John Pontifex contributed to this report.