Pope, Catholic Church can play central role in promoting religious freedom: Pompeo

Pope Francis and the Catholic Church can play a central role in promoting religious freedom, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said today.

We think it's incredibly important that not only governments as in the State Department and the United States but religious leaders too understand that they need to press for religious freedom for their particular faith and their beliefs, but that they should also play a role in ensuring that there's religious freedom for those that share other faiths than the one, Pompeo asserted.

We think they (Pope Francis and Catholic Church) can play a central role, he told Vatican News in an interview.

So, we think the Catholic Church can play an important role in the mission that we're attempting to achieve through gathering these folks in Washington in the days ahead, Pompeo said ahead of the ministerial meeting on religious freedom convened by the Trump administration.

The state department, under President Donald Trump, he said, has made religious freedom a true priority for this administration. Over 80 delegations including more than 40 of his counterparts, foreign ministers from around the world, the largest number ever gathered at the State Department would be attending the conference this week.

And our mission is really straightforward and important. It is to spread the word of the importance of religious freedom for every individual around the world. We want to press for that, he said.

There are countries that share America's understanding of that, there are those who don't, and we want to move each of them in the right direction towards increasing religious freedom. People of all faiths should have the right to worship as they please, or if they choose not to, they should be permitted to do that as well, Pompeo said.

Responding to a question, Pompeo said religious freedom, human rights, and economic interests are all deeply connected.

The Trump administration and I both agree that religious freedom has enormous benefits for countries. When individuals are permitted to act and behave freely with respect to their faith, they have the capacity for greatness, he said.

And so we see a deep connection between religious freedom as a fundamental human right, and the economic benefits that flow to countries that have this religious freedom. Investors prefer countries that have broad religious freedom. Commercial actors see places with religious freedom as places more open and with less risk. We think that religious freedom and human rights and economic success are deeply connected, deeply tied, and we think it benefits American foreign policy to reinforce this, Pompeo said.