In an address to the United Nations (UN) and international organizations March 3, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the UN highlighted high levels of Christian persecution around the world and urged countries to fulfill their responsibility to protect religious freedom.
Archbishop Ettore Balestrero said during a UN event on Christian persecution that nearly 400 million — or one in seven — Christians around the world are targeted for their faith, which he said makes them “the most persecuted religious community in the world,” Vatican News reported. He said in 2025 alone, almost 5,000 Christians were killed, an average of 13 martyrdoms per day.
Archbishop Balestrero said that persecuted Christians are witnesses to their faith but added that they are nonetheless “victims of outrageous human rights violations” whose “testimony must not distract from the fundamental responsibility of States which should have protected them.”
The archbishop highlighted governments’ responsibility to protect freedom of religion as a fundamental human right and raised concerns that Christians in a variety of countries are subjected to different forms of persecution, including physical violence, false detention, seizing of property, hate crimes, exclusion, and restrictions. He pointed out that in Europe, more than 760 hate crimes against Christians — such as church burnings, physical assaults, or vandalism — were recorded in 2024. Statistics do not include subtler forms of persecution, such as discrimination or “gradual marginalization or exclusion from social and professional life,” Archbishop Balestrero added.
He also noted that several Western countries protect human rights but that specific freedoms “are sometimes overridden by competing interests or claims to so-called ‘new rights,’ the normative status of which is not established in any treaty or customary international law.”
“These include prosecutions for silent prayer near abortion facilities or for quoting a Bible verse on social issues,” he said.
As Zeale News previously reported, several pro-lifers in the UK, including Adam Smith-Connor, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, Livia Tossici-Bolt, Rose Docherty, and Stephen Green have faced prosecution and other consequences for praying outside abortion facilities. Zeale News also reported on the case of Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen, who has faced years of litigation over hate speech charges filed after she tweeted a Bible verse expressing her Christian views on same-sex relationships.
Archbishop Balestrero concluded by warning that “attacks on Christians are attacks on the Cross itself,” and used the structure of a cross as an analogy for relationships with God and one another. The vertical line of the cross, he said, “represents human openness to transcendence,” while the horizontal line represents “the human bond with others.” He said attacking the vertical line seeks “to sever the relationship between conscience and God” and to confine faith to silence. Attacking the horizontal line, he added, deprives “the human person of their innate capacity to respond freely to the call of truth,” leading to ruptured relationships and communities.