Prince Charles: "The scale of religious persecution around the world is not widely appreciated"

The prince said he had recently met a Jesuit priest from Syria who described the plight of Christians he was forced to leave behind in the country. He said: "He told me of mass kidnappings in parts of Syria and Iraq and how he feared that Christians will be driven en masse out of lands described in the Bible. He thought it quite possible there will be no Christians in Iraq within five years. Clearly, for such people, religious freedom is a daily, stark choice between life and death."

The Prince of Wales said the rise of populist groups "aggressive" to minority faiths had "deeply disturbing echoes of the dark days" of the 1930s. In the Christmas message, he urged respect for those of different faiths.

The prince said the scale of religious persecution around the world was "not widely appreciated" and was not limited to Christians, but included many other minority faiths. He told listeners he was born just after the end of World War Two in which his parents' generation had fought against an attempt to "exterminate the Jewish population of Europe."

He went on: "That, nearly seventy years later, we should still be seeing such evil persecution is, to me, beyond all belief. We owe it to those who suffered and died so horribly not to repeat the horrors of the past."

He then cited a recent report that found an increase in attacks on minority faiths.

“According to the United Nations, 5.8 million more people abandoned their homes in 2015 than the year before, bringing the annual total to a staggering 65.3 million. That is almost equivalent to the entire population of the United Kingdom,” he said.

“The suffering doesn’t end when they arrive seeking refuge in a foreign land.”

“That nearly 70 years later we should still be seeing such evil persecution is to me beyond all belief,” he said. “We owe it to those who suffered and died so horribly not to repeat the horrors of the past.”

The Prince said: "Whichever religious path we follow, the destination is the same - to value and respect the other person, accepting their right to live out their peaceful response to the love of God."

The prince urged listeners this Christmas to remember “how the story of the Nativity unfolds with the fleeing of the holy family to escape violent persecution”.

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