The Archbishop of Westminster and President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Richard Moth, has joined an international campaign calling on the United Nations and governments around the world to ensure that the rights of people targeted because of their faith are upheld in practice. The Archbishop has backed the campaign launched by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), which is calling for the full implementation of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the provision protecting freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
The appeal is prompted by figures contained in the latest Religious Freedom in the World report, published by the same pontifical foundation: 5.4 billion people are estimated to live in countries where governments or extremist groups foster religious oppression and discrimination. In a message issued in recent days, Moth set out the forms such hostility can take: men and women are imprisoned, forced from their homes or killed simply for peacefully professing their beliefs; in some countries, women and girls are abducted, forced to renounce their faith and marry their captors; many children are denied the opportunity to receive a religious education. Young and old alike, the Archbishop writes, remain victims of religious hatred and suffer “abuse and discrimination” in the streets, at school and at work.
Moth’s appeal to Catholics in England and Wales goes beyond drawing attention to the problem. He is asking them to sign the petition promoted by ACN, presenting it as an act of solidarity with diocesan communities that already bear the marks of persecution among their own members: families and individual believers who have come to Britain after fleeing situations of oppression. In the Archbishop’s view, defending the religious freedom of others also means recognising a wound already present within their own communities.
The initiative is given further theological weight by a passage from Leo XIV, cited in the message as a framework for the entire campaign. Religious freedom, the Pope wrote, “is not merely a legal right or a privilege granted to us by governments. It is a foundational condition that makes authentic reconciliation possible.” The wording shifts the emphasis from the legal sphere to a more specifically ecclesial one: from this perspective, safeguarding religious belief becomes a necessary condition for genuine reconciliation between peoples and communities.
It is in this combination of stark figures, mobilisation within diocesan communities and the papal framework that the Article 18 campaign takes on its broader significance. Rather than an isolated awareness-raising initiative, it represents an attempt to place freedom of religion or belief at the centre of the Church’s global agenda, at a time when the pontificate of Leo XIV appears intent on bringing together the language of human rights and the language of reconciliation more characteristic of the Church’s magisterium.
The petition promoted by Aid to the Church in Need can be read and signed here.
