Holy See on Human Rights

(Sept 19,2007) “The development of the protection and promotion of all fundamental rights, begun with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), shows that religious freedom can serve as an element of synthesis, as a bridge, among the diverse categories of human rights,” says Archbishop Silvano M Tomasi, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations Office. He was speaking at the 6^th session of the Human Rights Council at Geneva on September 19, 2007. In current debates, he said, that there is a widely felt perception that the international community is confronted with the difficult task to balance freedom of religion, freedom of expression, respect of religious and non-religious beliefs and convictions, defamation of religion and members of a religion.
The profession of a religion in public or in private is in fact a freedom that belongs not only in the area of civil and political rights – and therefore linked to freedom of thought, of expression and worship – but also in that of economic, social and cultural rights, he added. Such a linkage is evident in the power of self-organization of religions, in the charitable action of individual members of faith communities, particularly in the fields of health, education and formation.
He also suggested that the appropriate social and political context within which to promote and protect all human rights, including the profession of a religion or changing or rejecting it, implies the acceptance that human rights are interrelated and that international standards should be translated into judicial and legal national provisions for the equal benefit, protection and freedom of every person.