Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Pope Benedict XVI’s Address to the U.N. General Assembly

New York Times
Published: April 19, 2008

Following is the text of Pope Benedict XVI’s address to the United Nations General Assembly on April 18, as supplied by the Vatican and checked against delivery. The remarks were delivered partly in French and partly in English.

[In French]

Mr. President,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As I begin my address to this Assembly, I would like first of all to express to you, Mr. President, my deep gratitude for your kind words. My thanks go also to the Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, who has invited me to visit the headquarters of this Organization and to thank him for the welcome he has given me. I greet the Ambassadors and Diplomats of Member States, and all those present. Through you, I send greetings the peoples whom you represent here. They expect this institution to carry forward the founding inspiration to establish a "centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends" of peace and development (cf. Charter of the United Nations, article 1.2-1.4). As Pope John Paul II expressed in 1995, the Organization must be "a moral center where all the nations of the world feel at home and develop a shared awareness of being, as it were, a ’family of nations’" (Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations on the 50th Anniversary of its Foundation, New York, 5 October 1995, 14).

Through the United Nations, States have established universal objectives which, even if they do not fully coincide with the total well-being of the human family, nevertheless represent a fundamental part of it. The founding principles of the Organization — the desire for peace, the quest for justice, respect for the dignity of the individual, and humanitarian cooperation and assistance — express the just aspirations of the human spirit, and constitute the ideals which must underlie international relations. As my predecessors Paul VI and John Paul II have observed from this very podium, this is all part of the realities that the Catholic Church and the Holy See regard attentively and with interest, seeing in your activity an example of how problems and conflicts affecting the world community can benefit from common settlement. The United Nations embodies the aspiration for a "greater degree of international ordering" (John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 43), inspired and governed by the principle of subsidiarity, and therefore capable of responding to the demands of the human family through binding international rules and through structures capable of harmonizing the day-to-day unfolding of the lives of peoples. This is all the more necessary in the current context, when we are witnessing the obvious paradox of a multilateral consensus that continues to be in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a small number, while the world’s problems require from the international community that it act on a common basis.

Indeed, questions of security, the development goals, the reduction of inequalities, both locally and globally, the protection of the environment, of resources and of the climate, require that all international leaders act together and show a readiness to work in good faith, in respect of the rule of law, to promote solidarity in the most fragile regions of the planet. I am thinking especially of those countries in Africa and on other continents which are still excluded from authentic integral development, and are therefore at risk of experiencing only the negative effects of globalization. In the context of international relations, we must recognize the higher role played by rules and structures that are intrinsically ordered to promote the common good, and therefore to safeguard human freedom. These regulations do not limit freedom. On the contrary, they promote it when they prohibit behavior and actions which work against the common good, curb its effective exercise and hence compromise the dignity of every human being. In the name of liberty, there has to be a correlation between rights and responsibilities, on the basis of which every individual is called to shoulder responsibility for his or her choices, while taking into account relations with other people. Here our thoughts turn also to the way the results of scientific research and technological advances have sometimes been used. While recognizing the immense benefits that humanity can draw from them, some of the uses constitute a clear violation of the order of creation, to the point where not only is the sacred character of life contradicted, but the human person and the family are robbed of their natural identity. Likewise, international action to preserve the environment and to protect various forms of life on earth must not only guarantee a rational use of technology and science, but must also rediscover the authentic image of creation. This never requires a choice to be made between science and ethics: rather it is a question of adopting a scientific method that is truly respectful of ethical imperatives.
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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 12:12 PM