At Hanoi’s Cua Bac Cathedral, amid sea of giggling young choristers in white silk robes and red cravats, President George W. Bush made a solemn call for religious freedom – a plea intended both for Vietnam’s Communist leadership and his own conservative Christian base.

“A whole society is a society which welcomes basic freedoms, and there’s no more basic freedom than the basic freedom to worship as you see fit,” Mr Bush said, after attending half an hour of a ground-breaking ecumenical service - with both Protestant and Catholic elements - the first ever such held at the Catholic Cathedral.