The head of Iran’s Islamic seminaries has written to the Pope, telling him that former Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was a “serious supporter of the rights of religious minorities, especially Christians”.

Alireza Arafi made the comment in a letter made public by Iranian state media, in which he also called on the Pope to champion “peace and justice” in the face of war.

Article18 has for years documented how Christians are systematically persecuted in Iran, with at least 48 Christians currently in prison on charges related to their religious beliefs and activities.

It should also be noted that both Khamenei and Arafi have made public statements warning about the spread of house-churches in Iran – the primary place of worship for Christians in Iran, as Persian-speaking converts, who are believed to far outnumber the ethnic Armenian and Assyrian Christians, are prohibited from attending official churches.

Iran’s Catholic archbishop, Dominique Mathieu, who recently left the country due to the war, admitted in 2024 that the doors to the churches he oversees were “closed to almost everyone”, and said he prayed that “one day perhaps the door can open to others”.

“Our doors … are open for [Catholics] but are closed to almost everyone else,” he said.

Khamenei, meanwhile, in an infamous October 2010 speech, implicitly called for a crackdown on house-churches, by naming them among the “critical threats” facing the Islamic Republic – after which the government’s pressure on house-churches and Christian converts increased significantly.

Arefi has also warned of their spread and regularly attacked what he and his fellow seminarians refer to as “missionary Christianity” – in an effort to distinguish evangelicals from the tolerated Orthodox and Catholic Christians of Armenian and Assyrian descent.

Similar language was used in an official communication by Islamic Republic officials to the United Nations in 2021, when it denied systematically persecuting Christians and called house-churches “enemy groups” of a “Zionist cult”.