Columban missionary 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 25 May 2021.
Fr McCulloch is Procurator General of the Missionary Society of St Columban and served in Pakistan for 34 years.
Based in Rome, the Columban missionary 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 Foreign Commonwealth and Development Affairs (South Asia, Commonwealth, UN).
They explored how these issues can be addressed at national and international levels. The Italian director of Aid to the Church in Need 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 EU on 26 May 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 & supporting communities affected by such violence. I thank representatives of Catholic networks for their tireless work. The UK is fully committed to supporting survivors & 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 recently happened in Lahore in April 2021 and in Faisalabad in March 2021
- the shameful reality in Pakistan of the kidnapping of teenage and often under-age 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the support of the Council of Islamic Ideology and the National Minorities Commission [from which minority members have withdrawn] on all school children in Pakistan regardless of their own religious belief,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 assisted in the preparation of the Truro Report which was released in July 2019.
The Truro Report was commissioned by Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury at the request of the UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt for the British Parliament.
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 Truro Report.