Pope Francis showed himself keenly aware of the discrepancy between the words about religious liberty and the de facto reality of our present situation. The Holy Father drew the president’s attention to something that the president certainly knew.
On June 30, 2015, the feast of the Christians martyred under Nero in 64 A.D., our Holy Father, Pope Francis, remarked that there are more persecuted Christians in the world today than there were in the first centuries.