PARIS - A Vatican diplomatic campaign to have "Christianophobia" recognized as an evil equal to hatred of Jews and Muslims is causing concern among some Christian activists and diplomats who draft new human rights rules. The drive, which the Roman Catholic Church first mentioned publicly Friday, seeks official recognition by the United Nations and other international organizations of discrimination against and persecution of Christians. The Holy See is pressing this point despite two setbacks this year when the European Union refused to refer to the Continent's Christian heritage in its new constitution and turned down a traditionalist Catholic as a new commissioner. In discussing religious bias, the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva now speaks of "anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Christianophobia," terms the current General Assembly in New York is due to approve later this month. "Obviously we have seen many countries where Christian minorities are in danger, but we don't think this is the appropriate way to really ensure protection," said Alessandra Aula of Franciscans International, a Catholic pressure group. "What we fear is that this is the way to start eroding universal human rights," she said from her office in Geneva. "You will then have Sikhs and Buddhists and all the others coming and claiming rights. Where does it end?" This campaign has been so quiet that the term was hardly known until the Vatican's foreign minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, said Friday that the Holy See had insisted the U.N. list it along with anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. "It should be recognized that the war against terrorism, even though necessary, had as one of its side effects the spread of 'Christianophobia' in vast areas of the globe," he told a U.S.-organized conference on religious freedom in Rome. The World Council of Churches, which is also based in Geneva and unites more than 340 Protestant and Orthodox churches around the globe, said it was not consulted on the new term. The Vatican has suggested the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna include Christianophobia as an evil to be monitored, diplomats there say. But the OSCE annual session now under way in Sofia was unlikely to fully back that. "We don't want any more terms ending in 'phobia,' " a diplomat there said. "Once you single out something beyond racism and xenophobia, you have to list so many of them." Vatican officials say privately they could not stand aside while Judaism and Islam got special attention at the U.N., which demands regular status reports from member countries on issues officially recognized as problems of international concern.