The Pope also announced that the communist government of Vietnam has accepted his appointment of a papal representative to Catholics in the country. Vietnam agreed in June to allow the Pope to name a representative as a first step toward diplomatic relations. Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said the representative’s name would be announced shortly.

Pope Benedict told the diplomats that when religious believers are free to practise their faith, society benefits from an increase in upright behaviour, respect for others and solidarity with the poor and weak.

Discussing threats to full religious freedom in Western democracies, the Pope expressed concern about efforts to push religion to the margins of public life and about situations in which citizens are denied the right to act in accordance with their religious convictions, “for example where laws are enforced limiting the right to conscientious objection on the part of health care or legal professionals.”

The Vatican has insisted on the right of Catholic health care workers, including pharmacists, not to be involved in abortions or other procedures that violate Church teaching on the right to life.

The Pope told the diplomats that there is no such thing as a “scale of degrees of religious intolerance” whereby a certain amount is acceptable.

It is not permissible to infringe on the freedom of conscience out of concern to uphold “other alleged new rights which, while actively promoted by certain sectors of society and inserted in national legislation or in international directives, are nonetheless merely an expression of selfish desires lacking a foundation in authentic human nature,” the Pope said.

Lombardi said those “alleged new rights” included a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion and the right of homosexual people to marry and adopt children.