Westminster Cathedral is to be floodlit in red this November to highlight the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The event is being arranged by Aid to the Church in Need, which hopes other churches will follow suit. Lord Alton of Liverpool wrote at Catholic Truth Society online: “If every parish in the country did the same it might at last wake up our political classes to the scale of the suffering.” Lord Alton went on to explain how in one recent parliamentary meeting he heard how a Christian pastor in a village of Aleppo was told to convert or die and was forced to watch as his 12-year-old son was tortured: the boy’s fingers cut from his hand. He concluded: “Neither the father nor son renounced their faith, and both were executed.” Despite resolutions being passed in the US, Europe and Australia, he said, “the British Government still fails to name these events for the genocide that they are – or to lay a resolution before the [UN] Security Council.” In April this year, MPs voted unanimously in favour of tabling a motion at the UN calling for action against the genocide of Christians in the Middle East, but the Government is yet to take further action. In his article Lord Alton urged readers to take action to raise awareness about the scale of persecution. He wrote: “It’s high time we stood with those who are suffering or dying for their beliefs”. He gave the example of Christians such as “the Iranian, Saeed Abedini, who was imprisoned for 10 years for ‘undermining national security’ by hosting Christian gatherings in his home.”