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Iran’s Catholic archbishop has admitted that the doors to the churches he oversees are “closed to almost everyone”, and said he prays “one day perhaps the door can open to others”.

“Our doors … are open for [Catholics] but are closed to almost everyone else,” Fr Dominique Mathieu told EWTN News. 

“We … also keep the doors open to our Assyrian or Armenian Church brothers and sisters — they can come, it’s not a problem, because we are not an ethnic Church. We maintain a door, praying from within, hoping that one day perhaps the door can open to others.”

Fr Mathieu, who is due to be appointed as one of Pope Francis’ new cardinals on Saturday, said he remains “convinced” of the “importance” of Church’s “non-verbal” witness, adding: “Proselytism cannot be done, but we are not prevented from living in society and bearing witness.

“The importance of our witness, of praying, of having a virtuous life, of working on our sanctification, because there we are truly also a leaven for the country. We can be that salt that gives life.”

There are less than 2,000 Catholics in Iran, and only they “can gather in churches that are recognised by the state,” Fr Mathieu acknowledged. “Only they can enter these places of worship”, and only “during services or times that have been announced to the authorities regarding the churches themselves”.

Pope Francis said last month that it was “a lie” to say the Catholic Church was opposed to the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but “freedom of conscience and religion is the cornerstone of the entire edifice of human rights”.

“Nor is freedom of religion limited to the expression of worship,” he said. “It also entails complete freedom in the matter of one’s own beliefs and religious practice.”

The pope added that he was “aware” of the “challenges” the Church in Iran faces “as it perseveres in bearing witness to Christ and contributing, quietly but significantly, to the good of society as a whole, while rejecting all religious, ethnic or political discrimination”.

Iran’s 2,000 Catholics represent just a tiny fraction of the country’s estimated 800,000 Christians, the vast majority being converts from nominally Muslim backgrounds, who are not permitted to attend either Roman Catholic churches or those belonging to the Armenian and Assyrian minorities, who are estimated to number between 50,000-80,000.

With no place to worship, converts meet together in their homes in what have become known as “house-churches”, but these are considered “illegal gatherings” of “enemy groups” and, once discovered, members are routinely arrested and can face lengthy imprisonment on charges of “acting against national security”.

The Georgian immigration authorities consistently refuse the asylum claims of Iranian Christians, despite their well-founded fears of persecution should they return home.

That is the conclusion of a new joint report by Article18, CSW, Open Doors and Middle East Concern, based on in-depth interviews with the asylum-seekers and their legal representatives.

“The asylum-seekers therefore face an uncertain future, with little hope of being recognised as refugees but having few alternative options to access international protection,” the report says.

“Several individuals whose asylum claims have been rejected in Georgia have already spent years as refugees in neighbouring countries such as Turkey, and say they no longer know what to do, nor where to go.

“They appeal to the Georgian authorities to recognise the legitimacy of their claims, and to the international community to open up new safe, legal routes for resettlement.”

Nearly one-fifth of all asylum-seekers in Georgia are Iranian, the report notes, while around 90% of their claims are based on a purported conversion to Christianity and resulting fears. However, over the past three years, less than 1% of the more than 1,000 Iranians who have claimed asylum – on whatever grounds – have received positive answers from Georgia’s immigration service. 

There are a variety of reasons for the rejections, the report suggests, including Georgia’s “burgeoning relationship with Iran” and “intolerance of expressions of Christianity other than Georgian Orthodox”, “and the consequence is that several hundred Iranian Christians currently seeking asylum in Georgia have little hope of being permitted to remain in the country for long” 

In the majority of cases, claims are rejected on the basis that their faith is found not to be genuine. But in the cases of two individuals featured in the report, Pastor Reza Fazeli and Amin Zangeneh Zad, their claims were rejected even though their faith was accepted. 

“Praise the Lord, I was the first person to be recognised that way!”  Reza said. “But after that, they said: ‘You won’t have any problem in your country. You can go back.’”

Amin told a similar story: “[The immigration department] said: ‘You’re a Christian, OK, but even though you’re a Christian, even though you do evangelism, we believe you’re not in any danger In Iran,’” he said. “I was shocked, because how can they say so? I have translated more than five theology books into Persian, and my name is written on them, and they said: ‘OK, you did this but it’s not dangerous for you [to go back].’” 

The wording in both Amin and Reza’s rejection letters were strikingly similar, the report notes.

“It is like it is the same letter for all Iranian Christians,” another rejected asylum-seeker, Hadi Pourmohammadi, said. “Just, they took my name [out] and put [my friend’s] name in.” 

As a result, the report says “there is a growing sense of hopelessness among Iranian Christian asylum seekers in Georgia, who feel increasingly doubtful about their chances of being granted refugee status, and equally uncertain about other options available to them”. 

“I don’t want to pursue my asylum case anymore,” said Amin. “I’m really tired. I cannot live this way anymore. I’m trying to find another country to go to – anywhere I can survive – but so far, I haven’t found any.”

Another asylum-seeker who had already spent nearly a decade in Turkey before moving to Georgia, Sasan Rezaee, said he was “so tired” he has even contemplated returning to Iran and accepting “whatever punishment they may give me”. 

“My body and my soul cannot stand this pressure much longer, but what can I do?” he said. “I can’t stay here in Georgia. I can’t stay in Turkey. I don’t want go to Armenia, and I don’t want to go back to my country. But if they reject me here and I don’t have access to go to another part of the world, I will return to my country, because I’m tired of the asylum seeker situation. I’m so tired. I even think of suicide sometimes.” 

Meanwhile, Hadi Pourmohammadi, who had also previously spent years in Turkey, said he no longer trusts the UN’s refugee agency to help him:

“I know I will have to leave Georgia very soon, but the problem is, it’s nine years now I’ve been with the UNHCR in Turkey and Georgia; nine years I’ve been a refugee. So it would be very hard for me to go to another country and apply again with the UNHCR. I can’t trust the UNHCR anymore. I don’t know what to do.” 

Another asylum-seeker who was forced to leave Georgia earlier this year after the rejection of his claim, Iliya Rahnama, said he sometimes wonders whether Iranians are treated less fairly than others:

“What was our mistake? Most countries talk about freedom of religion. OK, I was Muslim and in 2012 I believed in Jesus Christ. Was that a mistake? Sometimes, I am confused why Europe, the USA, and other countries can’t understand about Iranian Christians. Why do they close their eyes?

“Did we say [to other countries]: ‘Give us a house! Give us a car! Give us money!’? No, just we say: ‘Please accept us, we want just to continue our life, we want just freedom. We want just to go to church. We want just to continue our life.’ Please come and see our situation. Please open your eyes. Please have mercy. Please get justice for us.” 

“The world needs to do something for refugees,” Hadi added. “Refugees and Iranian Christian refugees are people who come out of Iran and always miss everything. They miss their families; they miss their streets, their people, their shops. I also miss the food, the friendships; everything from Iran.” 

The report concludes with recommendations for the Georgian authorities and international community.

The Georgian authorities are advised to:

• “Ensure those responsible for immigration matters conduct a more thorough refugee determination process”;
• “Recognise the diversity of Christian belief … when assessing the authenticity of a religious conversion”;
• “Refer to the reports by the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, among others, when assessing the situation of Christians in Iran and determining whether asylum claimants have a well-founded fear of persecution if they were to return”. 

The international community is advised to:

• “Make urgent representations to the Georgian authorities regarding the plight of Iranian Christian asylum seekers”;
• “Initiate new safe and legal routes for Iranian Christians to be resettled”;
• “Increase efforts to ensure Iranian Christians who flee their country on account of religious persecution – or fear thereof –are protected and swiftly resettled”;
• “Strengthen regional protection mechanisms to ensure the continuing presence of Iranian Christians in the Middle East and Caucasus.”

You can read the full report here.

Pope Francis has said it is “a lie” to say the Catholic Church is opposed to the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but that religious freedom is the “cornerstone” of human rights. 

The pope, speaking in Rome last Wednesday as the Vatican hosted a delegation from the “Centre for Inter-religious & Intercultural Dialogue” in Tehran, said: “The Church is not against the government. To say otherwise is a lie.”

He added that he was “aware” of the “challenges” the Church faces “as it perseveres in bearing witness to Christ and contributing, quietly but significantly, to the good of society as a whole, while rejecting all religious, ethnic or political discrimination”.

Yet while he refrained from criticising the Iranian authorities, the pope said: “Freedom of conscience and religion is the cornerstone of the entire edifice of human rights. Nor is freedom of religion limited to the expression of worship; it also entails complete freedom in the matter of one’s own beliefs and religious practice.” 

Iran is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 18 of which enshrines religious freedom, including the freedoms to choose and change one’s religion, and to share one’s beliefs with others.

However, such freedoms do not exist in the Islamic Republic of Iran, as evidenced by the trial yesterday of 12 Christian converts in the northern city of Nowshahr, whose indictment cited their “identifying themselves as Christians” as evidence of their alleged criminality.

On the same day that Pope Francis was making his comments in Rome, the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly in New York passed a resolution calling on the Iranian government to “cease monitoring individuals on account of their religious identity, to release all religious practitioners imprisoned for their membership in or activities on behalf of a minority religious group … and to ensure that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief, including the freedom to have, to change or to adopt a religion or belief of their choice, in accordance with its obligations under the [ICCPR]”.

The pope said the small Catholic Church in Iran, which is believed to number just 2,000-6,000, “is close to my heart”, saying he had shown his affection for the country by choosing to appoint its archbishop, Fr Dominique Mathieu, who was present at the event in Rome, as one of his new cardinals.

“This decision expresses my closeness and concern for the Church in Iran, and in turn honours the entire country,” he said.

As part of its own coverage of the event, a member of the Iranian delegation, Mohammad Mehdi Imanipour, told Iranian state TV that Pope Francis had “stressed how Christian minorities in Iran are allowed to freely meet together and worship in churches across the country, without restriction”. 

But if the pope did utter such words, they were not among those spoken in his public address.

The UN General Assembly’s Third Committee adopted a resolution yesterday expressing “serious concern” at “ongoing severe limitations and increasing restrictions on the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief” in Iran.

The resolution, which was passed by 77 votes to 28, with 66 abstentions, names Christians, and “particularly converts from Islam”, among the recognised and unrecognised religious minorities suffering human rights violations including “increased harassment, intimidation, persecution, arbitrary arrest, detention and incitement to hatred that leads to violence”.

It calls on Iran to “cease monitoring individuals on account of their religious identity, to release all religious practitioners imprisoned for their membership in or activities on behalf of a minority religious group … and to ensure that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief, including the freedom to have, to change or to adopt a religion or belief of their choice, in accordance with its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”.

It also calls on Iran to “eliminate, in law and in practice, all forms of discrimination on the basis of thought, conscience, religion or belief”, including the “restrictions contained” in the amended Articles 499 and 500 of the penal code, which have been used to convict several Christians since they were introduced in 2021, and which the resolution says have “significantly escalated discrimination and violence” towards members of religious minorities, as well as denial of employment and restrictions on access to education. 

The resolution notes the restrictions placed “on the establishment of places of worship”, as highlighted in Article18’s Place2Worship campaign, and demands an end to “ongoing systemic impunity for those who commit crimes against persons belonging to recognised and unrecognised religious minorities”.

Who said what?

The representatives of Canada, Australia, the United States and Israel spoke out in condemnation of Iran’s restriction on freedom of religion or belief during the debate ahead of and after the vote, while the representatives of Brazil, Ghana and the UK specifically raised the plight of Baha’is. However, the Ghanaian representative explained that her country had abstained from voting on the basis of the “assurances” given by Iran of the “progress” being made with regard to human rights and “our expectation that in due time, those assurances will translate into tangible protection for all segments of the Iranian society”.

Several countries spoke in support of Iran and against “politicised” country-specific resolutions, including the representatives of North Korea, Russia, Syria, Pakistan, Venezuela, Nicaragua, China, Belarus and Cuba, as well as Iran’s own representative.

However, the Australian representative defended the resolution as being “evidence-based” and “aim[ing] to reflect the current human rights situation in Iran, without prejudice” … “by drawing heavily from independent and credible reports by the Special Rapporteur on situation of human rights in Iran, the UN Secretary General and the independent international fact-finding mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran”. 

“Country-specific resolutions in this committee do not impede sovereignty,” he said. “No country is above fair scrutiny of its human rights obligations, and no country, including my own, has a perfect human rights record. 

“Our commitments, as outlined in the UN Charter, include achieving international cooperation in solving international problems, including to promote and encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction. We can only achieve this through transparency, openness and accountability.” 

He called on Iran to grant access to Iran to the Special Rapporteur on Iran and the fact-finding mission “to further support their mandates, provide transparency, and facilitate accountability on human rights concerns”.

Earlier this month, the new Special Rapporteur, Mai Sato, pledged to “examine” the impact of Iran’s restrictions on religious freedom as part of an “intersectional” approach to rights violations in the country.

The exiled son of the former Shah of Iran has highlighted the “widespread and rampant persecution” of Christians and other religious minorities in the Islamic Republic.

In a post on X yesterday, Reza Pahlavi said his country was “once a bastion of religious liberty. But that changed with the Islamic Revolution of 1979”. 

Iran was once a bastion of religious liberty. But that changed with the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Alongside Jews and Baha’is, Iranian Christians immediately began to face widespread and rampant persecution. Christian and Catholic leaders were killed, detained, or forced to… https://t.co/V25i2NGaqh

— Reza Pahlavi (@PahlaviReza) November 19, 2024

“Alongside Jews and Baha’is, Iranian Christians immediately began to face widespread and rampant persecution,” he said. “Christian and Catholic leaders were killed, detained, or forced to flee the country…

“Today the persecution continues and Iranian Christians, especially Christian converts, are deprived of even the most basic rights, including access to churches.

“Christians are routinely imprisoned for their beliefs, facing absurd charges of ‘acts against national security’ and ‘collaboration and espionage for enemy states’.”

“Despite these daunting challenges”, Pahlavi said the Christian community “remains resilient”, and their “faith, courage, and hope serve as a testament to the enduring power of belief in the face of oppression”. 

However, he said “their struggle is far from over, and they need the support of the global Christian community more than ever”.

Pahlavi concluded by saying there was “hope” that the fall of the Islamic Republic would “pave the way for a new era of religious freedom in Iran and across the Middle East”. 

“A free and democratic Iran will once again embrace the diversity of faiths and beliefs that have been a part of our nation’s rich history for millennia,” he said. “Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, and Muslims can once again live together in harmony, free to practice their religions without fear of persecution.”

Pahlavi’s post followed his interview with Catholic news agency EWTN, in which he spoke of the “loss of opportunities” and “discrimination” that religious minorities including Christians face in Iran, which has led many to flee the country, and called for the establishment of a secular democracy that would ensure the separation of religion from State.

For this to be achieved, he said there was not only a need for a return to the “maximum pressure [on the regime]” of President Trump’s first term in office, but also for “maximum support” for the Iranian people, which he said he believed could lead to a change similar to that seen with the fall of the Soviet Union or of apartheid in South Africa.

You can watch the full interview here.

The new UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran has pledged to “examine” the impact of Iran’s restrictions on religious freedom as part of an “intersectional” approach to rights violations.

In her first address to the UN General Assembly in New York, Mai Sato acknowledged that Iran’s religious minorities “face systematic discrimination”, including “arbitrary detention, unfair trial, disproportionate application of the death penalty”, and “restrictions on their cultural practices, language rights and religious freedom”.

The rapporteur promised to address these issues further in a future report, by examining “the impact of laws, policies [and] customs on specific groups”, including different religions.

Dr Sato called on civil-society actors and UN member states to support her, as she introduced her first report, which referenced the work of her predecessor, Javaid Rehman, including in highlighting the “persecution of religious and ethnic minorities”, and set out her three priorities: the right to life; a gendered perspective and intersectional approach; and data transparency and the right to truth. 

Dr Sato said “the Iranian people continue to experience reprisals and intimidation for exercising their freedom of expression and for reporting human rights violations”.

Article18 reported earlier this year how one imprisoned Christian convert, Laleh Saati, and her mother were both threatened with new court proceedings due to the publicity her case had received. Laleh was later reportedly denied parole because she had refused to record a forced confession.

Dr Sato also highlighted the denial of medical care in prisons, which she said “should not be used to punish and silence prisoners”.

Another Christian prisoner of conscience, 60-year-old Mina Khajavi, has been denied the medical care she requires during her nearly 300 days in Tehran’s Evin Prison.

Several UN member states highlighted Iran’s violations of religious freedom in their responses to the rapporteur’s address, including the representatives of the EU, UK, USA, Canada, Israel, Ireland, Australia and the Czech Republic.

The Irish representative urged Iran to “reform articles 499 and 500 of the penal code to ensure that the rights to freedom of expression and religion and belief are fully guaranteed, in line with international law and standards”. 

The amended Article 500 has been used to convict over a dozen Christians since its introduction in February 2021.

The Irish representative also specifically highlighted the oppression of members of the Baha’i Faith, as did the representatives from the UK and Australia.

The Canadian representative said his country “deplored” the “intensified targeting” of religious minorities, while the Israeli representative said the systematic discrimination and violence they faced was “disheartening and should worry us all”.