There are three million Christians in Pakistan, many more than there are Muslims in Britain. But in a population of 150 million they are a small minority and, according to a leading Roman Catholic churchman, an increasingly oppressed one.

Lawrence Saldahna, Archbishop of Lahore, was among the leaders of the Muslim, Christian and Sikh faiths that the Prince of Wales met yesterday. The Prince spent the afternoon at a seminar discussing ways to bridge the gap between faiths.

But the Archbishop believes that, despite the best efforts of the Prince and others, the gap is widening. “Christians are now discriminated against in Pakistan,” he told reporters during a reception for the Prince and the Duchess of Cornwall at Lahore Anglican Cathedral.

“Pakistanis are traditionally tolerant. But discrimination against Christians is becoming more prevalent. I put it down to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Christians are trying to leave this country — they don’t see much of a future here.”

In an overwhelmingly Muslim nation, it was to a mosque that the Prince and the Duchess went first yesterday on their religious day out during their official visit to Pakistan.

Badshaki mosque, built in 1674 by the son of the Mogul emperor who built the Taj Mahal, is the second largest in Pakistan. It has walls of vivid red sandstone and a courtyard the size of four football pitches and can accommodate 55,000 worshippers, which is still 5,000 fewer than the Emirates Stadium, the new temple of Arsenal Football Club.

Observing Islamic custom, the Prince removed his brogues and put on black slippers. The Duchess was the soul of decorum in a long grey shirt reaching to well below her knees, white trousers, and a voluminous silk grey scarf to cover her head. Her only concession to Western-style allure was her bare feet with their perfectly painted crimson toenails.

The royal couple were conducted round the building by Maulana Abdul Khabir Azad, religious head of the mosque, whose father and predecessor in the post ran into trouble with his superiors in 1991 when he presented the late Diana, Princess of Wales, making her first overseas solo tour, with a shawl and a copy of the Koran. His alleged crime had been to allow her to tour the mosque in a dress that exposed her knees.

When senior mullahs took him to court the judge threw the case out and admonished them for wasting his time.

Within minutes of yesterday’s visitors leaving the mosque they had to remove their shoes again as they entered the Guru Arjan Dev gudwara, a Sikh temple next door. Built of white marble with a profusion of gold domes, it has the look of a Russian Orthodox church.

Men are required to cover their heads in Sikh temples, which caused a problem for the Prince. He has been photographed too often wearing silly hats on past overseas tours, so this time he took care to put on his white topi out of sight of the cameras. But a sole photographer was positioned, quite legitimately, inside the temple and the Prince was caught red-handed and white-hatted.

The royal couple were told by their hosts that yesterday was the 573rd birthday of Guru Nanak, the founder of their religion, who was born (and buried) only 50 miles from Lahore. They were expecting up to 5,000 Sikhs from India to join the celebrations.

As the couple emerged from the temple and put their shoes on for the second time, Shardar Kalyan Singh, administrator of the temple, disagreed with his Roman Catholic counterpart on one count; Lahore, he said, was a very tolerant city and Sikhs enjoyed perfectly cordial relations with Muslims.

While the Duchess was being taken on a tour of the ornate white painted residence and lush gardens of the Governor of Punjab province, the Prince was inside addressing the private seminar of 11 religious leaders and scholars. As they sat around a table under a large chandelier fitted entirely with curly energy-saving light bulbs, the Governor, Lieutenant-General (retired) Khalid Maqbool said that the Prince’s speech in 1993 pleading for a better understanding of Islam in the West still had its listeners.

“Most people in Pakistan are God-conscious and God-fearing. This large silent majority is our hope for the future,” the Governor said.

The theme of the seminar was the place of religious values in the modern world, and how different religions could accommodate their differences. It was all rather more elevated than the place of knees in mosques.

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