Religious and public leaders will gather on October 21 at the Pontifical Patristic Institute Augustinianum in Rome for the worldwide presentation of the latest edition of the Religious Freedom Report (RFR) 2025, prepared by the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).
The program will include the participation of Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, who will deliver the inaugural address. Victims of religious persecution will also share first-hand witnesses, including two women who spent years on death row for their Christian faith.
Alfredo Mantovano, Undersecretary of State at the Presidency of the Italian Council of Ministers, will participate in the opening program. The opening session, moderated by Alessandro Gisotti, Deputy Editorial Director at Vatican Media, will include a keynote address by Cardinal Parolin, followed by the official presentation of the findings of the latest edition of the RFR by its editor-in-chief, Marta Petrosillo.
Since 1999, ACN has published the Religious Freedom Report, which is currently released every two years. The RFR is the only report produced by a non-governmental organization that covers freedom of religion and belief in every country of the world and across all faith traditions.
In an interview published in August, Marta Petrosillo noted that “since the beginning of the RFR, the situation has tended to get worse, and unfortunately this is expected to be the trend for this next edition.”
She added that Africa remains a continent of great concern, where jihadist groups are perpetrating more attacks—including in countries such as Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where interreligious violence used not to be a problem.
A panel will then be held featuring voices from the suffering Church, including Bishop Matthew Kukah from Sokoto, Nigeria; Archbishop Jacques Mourad from Homs, Syria; and Archbishop Linus Neli from Manipur, India. ACN’s religious freedom expert for Latin America, Marcela Szymanski, will also take part.
In the afternoon, a second panel will focus on religious freedom in the West, with interventions by Jose Luis Bazán, Legal Advisor for Migration, Asylum and Religious Freedom at the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union; Mark von Riedemann, Director of Advocacy and Religious Freedom for ACN International; and Roger Kiska, an international advocate for religious freedom. The session will be moderated by Elisabetta Piqué, Vatican correspondent for the Argentinian newspaper La Nación.
During the event, two brief witnesses by female victims of persecution will be shared: Mariam Ibrahim, who was sentenced to death in Sudan in 2014 for converting to Christianity and later obtained asylum in the U.S.A.; and Shagufta Kausar, who was sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan in 2014 and spent eight years in prison before being released.
The day will conclude with a Mass, including prayers for persecuted Christians, to be celebrated at 5:00 p.m.
For further information, please visit: https://acninternational.org/religiousfreedomreport-launchconference/
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