Pompeo Is Set for ‘Religion’ Events This Week in the Vatican and Florida

Sept. 27, 2020 (EIRNS)—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set for two events this week regarding religious freedom, and what can be expected as opportunities for him to assert his concern for “unalienable rights” as the chance to blame China and other target nations. On Sept.30, he will deliver remarks to the Holy See Symposium on Advancing and Defending Religious Freedom through Diplomacy. He will speak from the U.S. Embassy in Italy, which is a stop on his Sept. 27-Oct. 2 tour, which will also include Greece and Croatia.

On Oct. 3, in Florida, Pompeo will keynote the Family Policy Council fundraiser in Orlando. Tickets are said to be $10,000 “for a personal visit with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,” according to the group’s promotional. The Family Policy Council is associated with Family Research Council, whose president Tony Perkins interviewed Pompeo last week at the time of the FRC’s Values Voter Summit. Other associated groups are Focus on the Family, and Alliance Defending Freedom.

In 2019, Pompeo founded the Commission on Unalienable Rights, appointing as Chairman Mary Ann Glendon, who was formerly U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, and also a former Harvard University mentor of his. When the Commission issued its report July 16, 2020, the two spoke at the ceremony in Philadelphia, and singled out China as violating religious freedom.

Pompeo said in Philadelphia that the new “report emphasizes foremost among these [unalienable] rights are property rights and religious liberty. No one can enjoy the pursuit of happiness if you cannot own the fruits of your own labor, and no society—no society can retain its legitimacy or a virtuous character without religious freedom.” To make his point that China violates this, he introduced a Chinese émigré to the U.S., Wei Jingsheng, “considered the father of today’s Chinese democracy movement.” He recognized him saying, “In 1997, he emigrated to America, where he has continued his courageous call for the Chinese Communist Party to honor the unalienable rights that God has given to every Chinese citizen—from Tibet to Tiananmen and from Hong Kong to Hubei.”

Glendon said that: “Some powerful countries are now openly challenging the basic premises of the great post-World War II human rights project.... China, in particular, is aggressively promoting a very different concept in which national priorities of various sorts prevail over the basic rights of speech, assembly, religious freedom, and free elections.” Glendon has represented the Hol