The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a statement marking the 25th anniversary of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, which established the Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
“The Catholic Church has long recognized the essential and inviolable nature of religious freedom,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan (chairman of the bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty) and Bishop David Malloy (chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace) said in the statement. “Sadly, 80% of the world’s inhabitants live in countries where there are high levels of governmental or societal restrictions on religion, and restrictions have been steadily increasing for several years.”