This Friday, the Assembly of the Republic unanimously approved a vote of greeting for the National Day of Religious Freedom and Interreligious Dialogue, “a reflection of the appreciation of religions within the framework of Portuguese democracy.”
The initiative was presented by the president of the parliament, Augusto Santos Silva, describing this day as “a reflection of the appreciation of religions in the framework of Portuguese democracyin respect for pluralism, equality and due tolerance in a secular State”.
The date is set for June 22 and was established by resolution of the Assembly of the Republic.
With this resolution, underlines the text, “the intention was to celebrate and highlight the fundamental importance of the values of religious freedom and the triptych of rights in which it can be deployed – freedom of conscience, religion and worship –, contributing to a more lively awareness of the whole society about the central place that these values and practices occupy in the democratic and tolerant society that we want to be”.
Religious freedom in Portugal finds in our legal system a favorable framework for its protection, which is reflected in daily practice, which allows us to be proud of being one of the countries with the greatest religious freedom in the world.
In this framework, he continues, “key pieces are the consecration of religious freedom as an inviolable fundamental right in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic of 1976, and the instruments of International Law that bind the Portuguese State, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , the European Convention on Human Rights or the Declaration of the United Nations and, more recently, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union”.
Internally, the initiative highlights the approval of the Religious Freedom Law of 2001, “whose symbolic importance is evident in the choice of the date of its approval, June 22, to commemorate this National Day of Religious Freedom and Interreligious Dialogue , having become a structuring law of the democratic regime“.
Source: Observadora
