Letter to the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to Canada from the Chairman of the CCCB Human Rights Committee
Thursday, May 31, 2012
In view of a statement made in Saudi Arabia by Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah this past March on the need “to destroy all the churches in the region”, the Most Reverend François Lapierre, P.M.É., Chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), has sent a letter to the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to Canada, with a copy to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In his letter, the CCCB Committee Chairman asks whether Saudi Arabian authorities have distanced themselves from this call to religious violence.
Bishop Lapierre also urges the Government of Saudi Arabia to apply the principle stated in the 2003 Riyadh Declaration: “Compulsion in religion is forbidden according to the Divine law, international traditions and conventions which should not be practiced under any circumstances” (#8).