The cardinal made his remarks in a speech April 17 at the law school of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. Large sections of his speech were published by L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.

Governments must always guarantee "the freedom of the church and its institutions to live and act in conformity with its religious convictions and, at the same time, the freedom of individuals to live and act in conformity with the dictates of their consciences," the cardinal said.

He explained to his audience that his remarks were prompted "most of all by the recent experience in the United States, a country which through the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights was founded precisely on religious freedom."

Cardinal Lajolo said recent U.S. laws and norms on abortion and on not discriminating against same-sex couples when arranging adoptions "place serious problems of conscience before Catholic institutions and Catholic citizens."

The cardinal said the recent federal government's mandate on services that health insurance must cover included "the costs of abortion." In fact, the Health and Human Service mandate would require that most health insurance plans cover the cost of contraception, sterilization and some drugs that can induce abortion.

Cardinal Lajolo said Europeans should not pretend that a similar situation could not develop on the continent. He asked for an "articulated elaboration" of the right of conscientious objection and said legislators must work to include conscience clauses in new laws that could create moral conflicts.

The Catholic Church "does not intend to impose" its moral teaching on society, he said, but it does expect that its moral principles be taken into consideration and that the rights of Catholic institutions and individuals to follow church teaching be guaranteed.