Mission World - July 2021- Fr Robert McCulloch participates in religious freedom consultation

Columban Fr Robert McCulloch with Alessandro Monteduro, Italy’s director of Aid to the Church in Need, Ambassador Sally Axworthy, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon and his secretary. Photo: Fr Robert McCulloch SSC

Columban Fr Robert McCulloch joined a high-profile delegation at the residence of the British ambassador to the Holy See to discuss religious freedom in Pakistan and the Middle East on May 25, 2021. Fr McCulloch is Procurator General of the Missionary Society of St Columban in Rome and served in Pakistan for 34 years.

Fr Robert gave a presentation on the major issues challenging religious freedom in Pakistan and participated in a discussion with Ambassador Axworthy and Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon who is the UK Minister of State for South Asia and the Commonwealth. They explored how these issues can be addressed at national and international levels. The Italian director of Aid to the Church in Need, Alessandro Monteduro was also part of the discussion.

The meeting took place just one day before Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Hussain Qureshi, spoke at the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on May 26 about Islamophobia without responding to EU concerns about the serious undermining of religious freedom in Pakistan.

After the meeting in Rome, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon tweeted, “Faith leaders play a crucial role in ending sexual violence in conflict situations and supporting communities affected by such violence. I thank representatives of Catholic networks for their tireless work. The UK is fully committed to supporting survivors and bringing perpetrators to justice.”

The issues discussed included:

• the ongoing abuse and misuse of the blasphemy laws.
• the manipulation of the blasphemy laws and outright religious aggression to eliminate Christian nurses from the nursing profession as has happened in Lahore in April 2021 and in Faisalabad in March 2021.
• the shameful reality in Pakistan of the kidnapping of teenage and often underage Christian and Hindu girls by Muslim men, their false conversion and their forced marriage presided over by Muslim clergy.
• the status of the national Islamicized education syllabus being imposed with the support of the Council of Islamic Ideology and the National Minorities Commission (from which minority members have withdrawn) on all school children in Pakistan regardless of their own religious belief.

Fr McCulloch also assisted in the preparation of the Truro Report which was commissioned by Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury at the request of the UK Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, for the British Parliament and released in July 2019. It looked at the situation of more than 390,000,000 Christians who are persecuted throughout the world because of their Christian faith or whose religious freedom is denied. Ten countries including Pakistan and China were included in the Report.

Columban Fr Robert McCulloch is the Rector of Collegio San Colombano, Rome.

Mission Intention for July 2021

We pray that, in social, economic and political situations of conflict, we may be courageous and passionate architects of dialogue and friendship.

We ask your prayers:

The prayers of our readers are requested for the repose of the souls of friends and benefactors of the Missionary Society of St Columban who died recently and for the spiritual and the temporal welfare of all our readers, their families and friends.

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• Read more from The Far East - July 2021