What Is Religious Freedom?

Religious freedom is a cornerstone of a free and just society, and its value extends for all. Both believers and non-believers benefit from its protections. In essence, religious freedom is not just about religion—it's about protecting the common space for all individuals to think, believe, and live according to their values. 

It confirms personal dignity and integrity individual citizens, allowing them to follow their conscience and moral autonomy. It insures the equal treatment under the law by reinforcing the principle that all individuals, regardless of belief, have the same rights and protections. It allows  to gather and form a community, giving a sense of belonging by cultivating and passing traditions without interference or discrimination. It protects from from persecution, it guards against oppressive regimes or societal pressures that might otherwise target individuals for their beliefs, allowing people to live by ethical systems that resonate with their convictions. It guarantees freedom of expression, which is also a right to question and critique.  It encourages dialogue, respect, and coexistence among people of different beliefs. It reduces conflicts by preventing violence and giving all groups space to exist peacefully. It promotes peace proposing tolerance and diversity, strengthening democracy, which fosters social growth and prosperity. 

Respect for this right is essential to human dignity, social harmony, and the preservation of pluralism in democratic societies. Free society allows to flourish each citizen. 

Everyone has the inherent right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.

This fundamental right protects a person's ability to hold beliefs, convictions, or faith of their choosing, free from coercion, discrimination, or interference by the state or other individuals. This right  recognizes the diversity of human thought and the importance of protecting individual autonomy to hold no religion or belief at all. It includes the liberty to adopt, change, or renounce one’s religion or beliefs at any time, without fear of punishment or retribution.

This right also guarantees the freedom to express and practice one’s religion or beliefs—alone or in community with others—both publicly and privately. Such expression may take the form of teaching, preaching, participating in rituals, observing holidays, wearing religious symbols, or engaging in other acts of worship and devotion.

At the personal level refers to human dignity of every person and intangible nature of one’s conscience as an individual, therefore the following have to be taken into account:

—freedom to hold or not to hold a particular faith and to join the corresponding confessional community;

—freedom to perform acts of prayer and worship, individually and collectively, in private or in public, and to have churches or places of worship according to the needs of the believers;

—freedom for parents to educate their children in the religious convictions that inspire their own life, and to have them attend catechetical and religious instruction as provided by their faith community;

—freedom for families to choose the schools or other means which provide this sort of education for their children, without having to sustain directly or indirectly extra charges which would in fact deny them this freedom;

—freedom for individuals to receive religious assistance wherever they are, especially in public health institutions (clinics and hospitals), in military establishments, during compulsory public service, and in places of detention;

—freedom, at personal, civic or social levels, from any form of coercion to perform acts contrary to one's faith, or to receive an education or to join groups or associations with principles opposed to one's religious convictions;

—freedom not to be subjected, on religious grounds, to forms of restriction and discrimination, vis-a-vis one's fellow citizens, in all aspects of life (in all matters concerning one's career, including study, employment or profession; one's participation in civic and social responsibilities, etc.).

At the community level, account has to be taken of the fact that religious denominations, in bringing together believers of a given faith, exist and act as social bodies organized according to their own doctrinal principles and institutional purposes.

All confessional communities in general need to enjoy specific liberties in order to conduct their life and to pursue their purposes; among such liberties the following are to be mentioned especially:

—freedom to have their own internal hierarchy or equivalent ministers freely chosen by the communities according to their constitutional norms;

—freedom for religious authorities (notably, in the Catholic Church, for bishops and other ecclesiastical superiors) to exercise their ministry freely, ordain priests or ministers, appoint to ecclesiastical offices, communicate and have contacts with those belonging to their religious denomination;

—freedom to have their own institutions for religious training and theological studies, where candidates for priesthood and religious consecration can be freely admitted;

—freedom to receive and publish religious books related to faith and worship, and to have free use of them;

—freedom to proclaim and communicate the teaching of the faith, whether by the spoken or the written word, inside as well as outside places of worship, and to make known their moral teaching on human activities and on the organization of society: this being in accordance with the commitment, included in the Helsinki Final Act, to facilitate the spreading of information, of culture, of exchange of knowledge and experiences in the field of education; which corresponds, moreover, in the religious field to the Church's mission of evangelization;

—freedom to use the media of social communication (press, radio, television) for the same purpose;

—freedom to carry out educational, charitable and social activities so as to put into practice the religious precept of love for neighbour, particularly for those most in need.

Furthermore:

—With regard to religious communities which, like the Catholic Church, have a supreme authority responsible at world level (in line with the directives of their faith) for the unity of communion that binds together all pastors and believers in the same confession (a responsibility exercised through Magisterium and jurisdiction): freedom to maintain mutual relations of communication between that authority and the local pastors and religious communities; freedom to make known the documents and texts of the Magisterium (encyclicals, instructions, etc.);

—at the international level: freedom of free exchange in the field of communication, cooperation, religious solidarity, and more particularly the possibility of holding multi-national or international meetings;

—also at the international level, freedom for religious communities to exchange information and other contributions of a theological or religious nature.