Vatican official speaks at UVU

Friday, Apr. 17, 2015

OREM — Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, gave the keynote address at the 2015 Mormon Studies’ Conference at Utah Valley University. The archbishop spoke on “Religious Freedom in the 21st Century: Common Cause Among Catholics & Latter-day Saints.” 

The daylong conference, with the topic “Mormons and Catholics, From the Margins to the Mainstream,” offered a number of speakers, including Franciscan Father Daniel Dwyer, associate professor of history at Siena College in New York; Matthew Grow, director of publications for the LDS Church History Department; and Gary Topping, archivist for the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City.

Archbishop Auza is the titular archbishop of Suacia; he previously served in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. In 1985 he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Tagbilaran, the Philippines. He holds licentiates in philosophy and theology and a master’s degree in education from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila. He also obtained a licentiate in canon law and a doctorate in sacred theology from the University of St. Thomas in Rome, and finished his diplomatic and linguistic studies at the Pontificia Accademia Ecclesiastica.  

The archbishop began his presentation discussing the state of religious freedom around the world.

Every human being “is a seeker of truth of his own origin and of his own destiny” and has thoughts and questions “which cannot be repressed or smothered,” Archbishop Auza said; these questions are by nature religious, “and in order to fully manifest themselves, they require freedom. The human person wants to be able freely to profess his or her religion in private and in public as individuals and as groups.”

Religious freedom has been enshrined as a civil right in international documents, and “every government bears the proud responsibility to guarantee in its constitution religious freedom for its people, and must uphold religious freedom both in principle and in fact,” Archbishop Auza said

However, governments for many years have been “trying to curtail, if not completely stop, people from exercising their religious freedom in public,” said the archbishop, adding that the state of religious freedom in the world today is “very worrisome. Today religious persecution – be it open or discreet, overt or private – is the emerging trend; today religious freedom is more and more curtailed.”

Religious persecution has never seen such barbarity as recently,  he added. “Even in some of the Western democracies – the longstanding paragons of human rights and freedoms – we find instances of increasingly less subtle signs of persecution, including the legal prohibition of the display of Christian symbols and imagery, and the legal imposition to choose between one’s religious conviction and law, between conscience and law.”

He gave an overview of the atrocities against Christians being committed worldwide, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. 

“Even as we speak, thousands are being killed, persecuted, deprived of their fundamental human rights and being discriminated against simply because they profess a belief which is different from the persecutors, and especially if they are Christians,” Archbishop Auza said.

However, “it seems that the international community, specifically the [United Nations] Security Council, has not yet found a way to confront that,” despite the resolutions that have been signed stating that governments have the responsibility to protect their citizens against such violence against genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, he said.

The Holy See encourages the international community to further codify this responsibility to protect people whose governments are unwilling or unable to defend them, the archbishop said.

 Also in his keynote address, Archbishop Auza addressed common ground on the issue of religious freedom that has been found by the Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

Historically, both Catholics and Mormons, as well as other religious minorities, suffered persecution in the United States, the archbishop said.

“It might even be said that because we did not always find a welcome mat, we needed in that crucible to learn how to welcome and provide for others, especially for those in need,” he said, adding that he thinks this is the reason “why our churches have built institutions to embrace, to educate, to help, to nourish, to insure, and hospitalize those in need, as much as our generosity could afford. Rather than wallowing in self-pity and playing the card of the victim, Catholics and Mormons both took advantage of the freedoms and opportunities still available in the United States to build institutions that have endured the passage of time.”

Today, Catholics and Mormons have found several ways to work together toward religious freedom. For example, Caritas International and the Humanitarian Center collaborate in offering humanitarian aid in various regions of the world, he pointed out.

That kind of collaboration strengthens the churches’ theological and moral dialog, but it’s also “really a dialog of life,” Archbishop Auza said. “We believe that, as Pope Francis affirmed, that true ecumenical and interreligious dialog is not so much a conversation but a mutual journey. It is about building bridges rather than walls. It begins with a conviction that others have something good and valuable to say, with a focus on what one has in common rather than on differences, with embracing rather than excluding. It doesn’t ignore differences, because differences matter, but it seeks to understand those differences and treat the persons who hold them with respect.” 

He mentioned four fields in which the Catholics and Mormons share common beliefs and can work together: traditional family values, education, charity, and living and sharing faith publicly.  

All four of these areas face challenges brought by the secular world. For example, Catholic charities are being required to refer clients to abortions, against the Church’s beliefs, the archbishop said.

Collaborative discussion on religious liberty, such as the visits to Brigham Young University by Cardinal Francis George in 2010 and Archbishop Charles J. Chaput this year, “we greatly appreciate,” Archbishop Auza said. “I think these are contributions that will make religious freedom not only a right, as such, but really right as lived by people who share this value.”

Referring to St. Augustine’s exclamation to God “O beauty ever ancient, ever new,” the archbishop said, “Freedom is a gift of God, just like beauty, just like goodness and peace. And just like these gifts, it is ever ancient and ever new. Ever ancient because it is one of the attributes of God, and freedom is one of God’s greatest gifts to his crowning creation. It is ever new because it is the fruit of our daily resolve and our daily efforts to respect freedom. It is a challenge held out to each one of us in every generation that it must be constantly won over every day for the cause of peace, for the cause of freedom.”       

As a thank you, the university recognized Archbishop Auza as an honorary professor.

While he was in Utah, Archbishop Auza also met with Gov. Gary Herbert and members of the hierarchy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; his visit included a tour of the LDS Humanitarian Center.