Newspaper Page Text
, PAGE 8—The Georgia 1 Bulletin, October 11,3979
II To United Nations
Text Pope John Paul
UNITED NATIONS (NC) - Here is the
prepared text of the address by Pope John Paul II
to the 34th General Assembly of the United
Nations on Oct. 2. At the United Nations, the
pope delivered a shorter version of the prepared
text.
Mr. President,
1. I desire to express my gratitude to the General
U Assembly of the United Nations, which I am permitted
Utoday to participate in and to address. My thanks go in
I* the first place to the Secretary General of the United
Nations organization, Dr. Kurt Waldheim. Last autumn,
.•soon after my election to the chair of St. Peter, he invited
t*me to make this visit, and he renewed his invitation in the
course of our meeting in Rome last May. From the first
moment I felt greatly honored and deeply obliged. And
•; today, before this distinguished assembly, 1 also thank
you, Mr. President, who have so kindly welcomed me and
•1 invited me to speak.
•1 2. The formal reason for my intervention today is,
without any question, the special bond of cooperation
that links the Apostolic See with the United Nations
Organization, as is shown by the presence of the Holy
;*See’s permanent observer to this organization. The
existence of this bond, which is held in high esteem by the
(• Holy See, rests on the sovereignty with which the
> Apostolic See has been endowed for many centuries. The
territorial extent of that sovereignty is limited to the small
CState of Vatican City, but the sovereignty itself is
►1 warranted by the need of the papacy to exercise its
Emission in full freedom, and to be able to deal with any
^interlocutor, whether a government or an international
organization, without dependence on other sovereignities.
Of course the nature and aims of the spiritual mission of
the Apostolic See and the church make their participation
in the tasks and activities of the United Nations
organization very different from that of the states, which
are communities in the political and temporal sense.
3. Besides attaching great importance to its
collaboration with the United Nations organization, the
Apostolic See has always, since the foundation of your
organization, expressed its esteem and its agreement with
the historic significance of this supreme forum for the
international life of humanity today. It also never ceases
to support your organization’s functions and initiatives,
which are aimed at peaceful coexistence and collaboration
' between nations. There are many proofs of this. In the
more than 30 years of the existence of the United Nations
organization, it has received much attention in papal
messages and encyclicals, in documents of the Catholic
episcopate, and likewise in the Second Vatican Council.
Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI looked with
confidence on your important institution as an eloquent
and promising sign of our times. He who is now addressing
you has, since the first months of his pontificate, several
times expressed the same confidence and conviction as his
predecessors.
4. This confidence and conviction on the part of the
> Apostolic See is the result, as I have said, not of merely
political reasons but of the religious, and moral character
I of the mission of the Roman Catholic Church. As a
universal community embracing faithful belonging to
almost all countries and continents, nations, peoples,
t races, languages and cultures, the church is deeply
• interested in the existence and activity of the organization
whose very name tells us that it unites and associates
nations and states. It unites and associates; it does not
divide and oppose. It seeks out the ways for
understanding and peaceful collaboration, and endeavors
•with the means at its disposal and the methods in its
'power to exclude war, division and muta! destruction
within the great family of humanity today.
5. This is the real reason, the essential reason, for my
presence among you, and I wish to thank this
distinguished assembly for giving consideration to this
•reason, which can make my presence among you in some
•way useful. It is certainly a highly significant fact that
*among you in the representatives of the states, whose
»raison d’etre is the sovereignty of powers linked with
•territory and people, there is also today the representative
;of the Apostolic See and the Catholic Church. This church
„is the church of Jesus Christ, who declared before the
• tribunal of the Roman judge, Pilate, that he was a king,
:but with a kingdom not of this world (cf. John 18:
136-37). When he was then asked about the reason for the
^existence of his kingdom among men, he explained: “For
t this I was born, and for this 1 have come into the world,
I to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37). Here, before
I the representatives of the states, I wish not only to thank
• you but also to offer my special congratulations, since the
• invitation extended to the pope to speak in your assembly
- shows that the United Nations organization accepts and
•respects the religious and moral dimension of those
human problems that it is her duty to bring to the world.
The questions that concern your functions and receive
your attention — as is indicated by the vast organic
complex of institutions and activities that are part of or
collaborate with the United Nations, especially in the
fields of culture, health, food, labor, and the peaceful uses
of nuclear energy — certainly make it essential for us to
meet in the name of man ir, his wholeness, in all the
fullness and manifold riches of his spiritual and material
existence, as 1 have stated in my encyclical “Redemptor
Hominis,” the first of ray pontificate.
6. Now, availing myself of the solemn Occasion of my
meeting with the representatives of the nations of the
earth, I wish above all to send my greetings to all the men
and women living on this planet. To every man and every
woman, without any exception whatever. Every human
being living on earth is a member of a civil society, of a
nation, many of them represented here. Each one of you,
distinguished ladies and gentlemen, represents a particular
state, system and political structure, but what you
represent above all are individual human beings; you are
all representatives of men and women, of practically all
the people of the world, individual men and women,
communities and peoples who are living the present phase
of their own history and who are also part of the history
of humanity as a whole, each of them a subject endowed
with dignity as a human person, with his or her own
culture, experiences and aspirations, tensions and
sufferings, and legitimate expectations. This relationship is
what provides the reason for all political activity, whether
national or international, for in the final analysis this
activity comes from man, is exercised by man and is for
man. And if political activity is cut off from this
fundamental relationship and finality, if it becomes in a
way its own end, it loses much of its reason to exist. Even
more, it can also give rise to a specific alienation; it can
become extraneous to man; it can come to contradict
humanity itself. In reality, what justifies the existence of
any' political activity is service to man, concerned and
responsible attention to the essential problems and duties
of his early existence in its social dimension and
significance, on which also the good of each person
depends.
7. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, to excuse me for
speaking of questions that are certainly self-evident for
you. But it does not seem pointless to speak of them,
since the most frequent pitfall for human activities is the
possibility of losing sight, while performing them, of the
clearest truths, the most elementary principle.
] would fike to express the wish that, in view of its
universal character, the United Nations organization will
never cease to be the’ forum, the high tribune from which
all man’s problems are appraised in truth and justice. It
was the name of this inspiration, it was through this
historic stimulus, that on June 26,1945, towards the end
of the terrible Second World War, the Charter of the
United Nations was signed and on the following Oct. 24
your organization began its life. Soon after, on Dec. 10,
1948, came its fundamental document, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the rights of the human
being as a concrete individual and of the human being in
his universal value. This document is a milestone on the
long and difficult path of the human race. The progress of
humanity must be measured not only by the progress of
science and technology, which shows man’s uniqueness
with regard to nature, but also and chiefly by the primacy
given to spiritual values and by the progress of moral life.
In this field is manifested the full dominion of reason,
through truth, in the behavior of the individual and of
society, and also the control of reason over nature; and
thus human conscience quietly triumphs, as was expressed
in the ancient saying, “Genus humanum atre et ratione
vivit.”
It was when technology was being directed in its
one-sided progress towards goals of war, hegemony and
conquest, so that man might kill man and nation destroy
nation by depriving it of its liberty and the right to exist
— and I still have before my mind the image of the Second
World War in Europe, which began 40 years ago on Sept.
1, 1939 with the invasion of Poland and ended on May 9,
1945 — it was precisely then that the United Nations
organization arose. And three years later the document
appeared which, as I have said, must be considered a real
milestone on the path of the moral progress of humanity
— the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The
governments and states of the world have understood
that, if they are not to attack and destroy each other,
they must unite. The real way, the fundamental way to
this is through each human being, through the definition
and recognition of and respect for the inalienable rights of
individuals and of the communities of peoples.
8. Today, 40 years after the outbreak of the Second
World War, I wish to recall the whole of the experiences
by individuals and nations that were sustained by a
generation that is largely still alive. I had occasion not
long ago to reflect again on some of those experiences, in
one of the places that are most distressing and overflowing
with contempt for man and his fundamental rights — the
extermination camp of Oswiecim (Auschwitz), which I
visited during my pilgrimage to Poland last June. This
infamous place is unfortunately only one of the many
scattered over the continent of Europe. But the memory
of even one should be a warning sign on the path of
humanity today, in order that every kind of concentration
camp anywhere on earth may once and for all be done
away with. And everything that recalls those horrible
experiences should also disappear forever from the lives of
nations and states, everything that is a continuation of
those experiences under different forms, namely the
various kinds of torture and oppression, either physical or
moral, carried out under any system, in any land; this
phenomenon is all the more distressing if it occurs under
the pretext of internal security or the need to preserve an
apparent peace.
9. You will forgive me, ladies and gentlemen, for
evoking this memory. But I would be untrue to the
history of this century, I would be dishonest with regard
to the great cause of man, which we all wish to serve, if I
should keep silent, I who come from the country on
whose living body Oswiecim was at one time constructed.
But my purpose in invoking this memory is above all to
show what painful experiences and sufferings by millions
of people gave rise to the Universial Declaration of Human
Rights, which has been placed as the basic inspiration and
cornerstone of the United Nations Organization. This
declaration was paid for by millions of our brothers and
sisters at the cost of their suffering and sacrifice, brought
about by the brutalization that darkened and made
insensitive the human consciences of their oppressors and
of those who carried out a real genocide. This price
cannot have been paid in vain! The Universal Declaration
of Human Rights — with its train of many declarations
and conventions on highly important aspects of human
rights, in favor of children, of women, of equality
between races, and especially the two international
covenants on economic, social and cultural rights and on
civil and political rights — must remain the basic value in
the United Nations organization with which the
consciences of its members must be confronted and from
which they must draw continual inspiration. If the truths
and principles contained in this document were to be
forgotten or ignored and were thus to lose the genuine
self-evidence that distinguished them at the time they
were brought painfully to birth, then the noble purpose of
the United Nations organization could be faced with the
threat of a new destruction. This is what would happen if
the simple yet powerful eloquence of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights were decisively subjugated
by what is wrongly called political interest, but often
really means ho more than one-sided gain and advantage
to the detriment of others, or a thirst for power regardless
of the needs of others — everything which by its nature is
opposed to the spirit of the declaration. Political interest
understood in this sense, if you will pardon me, ladies and
gentlemen, dishonors the noble and difficult mission of
your service for the good of your countries and of all
humanity.
10. Fourteen years ago my great predecessor Pope Paul
VI spoke fromm this podium. He spoke memorable
words, which 1 desire to repeat today: “No more war, war
never again! Never one against the other or even “one
above the other,” but always, on every occasion, “with
each other.”
Paul VI was a tireless servant of the cause of peace. I
wish to follow him with all my strength and continue his
sendee. The Catholic Church in every place on earth
proclaims a message of peace, prays for peace, educates
for peace. This purpose is also shared by the
representatives and followers of other churches and
communities and of other religions of the world, and they
have pledged themselves to it. In union with efforts by alt
people of good will, this work is certainly bearing fruit.
Nevertheless we are continually troubled by the armed
conflicts that break out from time to time. How grateful
we are to the Lord when a direct intervention succeeds in
avoiding such a conflict, as in the case of the tension that
last year threatened Argentina and Chile.
It is my fervent hope that a solution also to the Middle
East crises may draw nearer. While being prepared to
recognize the value of any concrete step or attempt made
to settle the conflict, I want to recall that it would have
no value if it did not truly represent the first stone of a
general overall peace in the area, a peace that, being
necessarily based on equitable recognition of the rights of
all, cannot fail to include the consideration and just
settlement of the Palestinian question. Connected with
this question is that of the tranquility, independence and
territorial integrity of Lebanon within the formula that
has made it an example of peaceful and mutually fruitful
coexistence between distinct communities, a formula that
I hope will, in the common interest, be maintained, with
the adjustments required by the developments of the
situation. 1 also hope for a special statute that, under
international guarantee — as my predecessor Paul VI
indicated — would respect the particular nature of
Jerusalem, a heritage sacred to the veneration of millions
of believers of the three great monotheistic religions,
Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
We are troubled also by reports of tne development of
weaponry exceeding in quality and size the means of war
and destruction ever known before. In this field also we
applaud the decisions and agreements aimed at reducing
the arms race. Nevertheless, the life of humanity today is
seriously endangered by the threat of destruction and by
the risk arising even from accepting certain tranquilizing
reports. And the resistance to actual concrete proposals of
real disarmament, such as those called for by this
assembly in a special session last year, shows that together
with the will for peace that all profess and that most
desire there is also in existence — perhaps in latent or
conditional form but nonetheless real — the contrary and
the negation of this will. The continual preparations for
war demonstrated by the production of ever more
numerous, powerful and sophisticated weapons in various
countries show that there is a desire to be ready for war,
and being ready means being able to start it; it also means
taking the risk that sometime, somewhere, somehow,
someone can set in motion the terrible mechanism of
general destruction.
11. It is therefore necessary to make a continuing and
even more energetic effort to do away with the very
possibility of provoking war, and to make such
catastrophes impossible by influencing the attitudes and
convictions, the very intentions and aspirations of
governments and peoples. This duty, kept constantly in
mind by the United Nations organization and each of its
institutions, must also be a duty for every society, every
regime, every government. This task is certainly served by
initiatives aimed at international cooperation for the
fostering of development. As Paul VI said at the end of his
encyclical “Populorum Progessio”: “If the new name for
peace is development, who would not wish to labor for it
with all his powers?” However, this task must also be
served by constant reflection and activity aimed at
discovering the very roots of hatred, destructiveness and
contempt — the roots of everything that produces the
temptation to war, not so much in the hearts of the
nations as in the inner determination of the systems that
decide the history of whole societies. In this titanic labor
of building up the peaceful future of our planet the
United Nations organization has undoubtedly a key
function and guiding role, for which it must refer to the
just ideals contained in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. For this declaration has struck a real blow
against the many deep roots of war, since the spirit of
war, in its basic primordial meaning, springs up and grows
to maturity where the inalienable rights of man are
violated.
This is a new and deeply relevant vision of the cause of
peace, one that goes deeper and is more radical. It is a
vision that sees the genesis, and in a sense the substance,
of war in the more complex forms emanating from
injustice viewed in all its various aspects; this injustice first
attacks human rights and thereby destroys the organic
unity of the social order and it then affects the whole
system of international relations. Within the church’s
doctrine, the encyclical “Pacem in Terris” by John XXIII
provides in synthetic form a view of this matter that is
very close to the ideological foundation of the United
Nations Organization. This must therefore form the basis
to which one must loyally and perseveringly adhere in
order to establish true peace on earth.
12. By applying this criterion we must diligently
examine which principal tensions in connection with the
inalienable rights of man can weaken the construction of
this peace which we all desire so ardently and which is the
essential goal of the efforts of the United Nations
organization. It is not easy, but it must be done. Anyone
who undertakes it must take up a totally objective
position and be guided by sincerity, readiness to
acknowledge one’s prejudices and mistakes and readiness
even to renounce one’s own particular interests, including
any of these interests. It is by sacrificing these interests
for the sake of peace that we serve them best. After all, in
whose political interest can it ever be to have another
war?
Every analysis must necessarily start from the premise
that — although each person lives in a particular concrete
social and historical context — every human being is
endowed with a dignity that must never be lessened,
impaired or destroyed but must instead be respected and
safeguarded, if peace is really to be built up.
13. In a movement that one hopes will be progressive
and continous, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and the other international and national juridical
instruments are endeavoring to create general awareness of
the dignity of the human being, and to define at least
some of the inalienable rights of man. Permit me to
enumerate some of the most important human rights that
are universally recognized: the right to life, liberty and
security of person; the right to food, clothing, housing,
sufficient health care, rest and leisure; the right to
freedom of expression, education and culture; the right to
manifest one’s religion either individually or in
community, in public or in private; the right to choose a
state of life, to found a family and to enjoy all conditions
necessary for family life; the right to property and work,
to adequate working conditions and a just wage; the right
of assembly and association; the right to freedom of
movement, to internal and external migration; the right to
nationality and residence; the right to political
participation and the right to participate in the free choice
of the political system of the people to which one
belongs. All these human rights taken together are in
keeping with the substance of the dignity of the human
being, understood in his entirety, not as reduced to one
dimension only. These rights concern the satisfaction of
man’s essential needs, the exercise of his freedoms, and his
relationships with others; but always and everywhere they
concern man, they concern man’s full human dimension.
14. Man lives at the same time both in the world of
materia! values and in that of spiritual values. For the
individual living and hoping man, his needs, freedoms and
relationships with others never concern one sphere of
values alone, but belong to both. Material and spiritual
realities may be viewed separately in order to understand
better that in the concrete human being they are
inseparable, and to see that any threat to human rights,
whether in the field of material realities or in that of
spiritual realities, is equally dangerous for peace, since in
every instance it concerns man in his entirety. Permit me,
distinguished ladies and gentlemen, to recall a constant
rule of the history of humanity, a rule that is implicitly
contained in all that I have already stated with regard to
integral development and human rights. The rule is based
on the relationship between spiritual values and material
or economic values. In this relationship, it is the spiritual
values that are pre-eminent, both on account of the nature
of these values and also for reasons concerning the good
of man. The pre-eminence of the values of the spirit
defines the proper sense of earthly material goods and the
way to use them. This pre-eminenece is therefore at the
basis of a just peace, it is also a contributing factor to
ensuring that material development, technical
development and the development of civilization are at
the service of what constitutes man. This means enabling
man to have full access to truth, to moral development,
and to the complete possibility of enjoying the goods of
culture which he has inherited, and of increasing them by
his own creativity. It is easy to see that material goods do
not have unlimited capacity for satisfying the needs of
man: they are not in themselves easily distributed and, in
the relationship between those who possess and enjoy
them and those who are without them, they give rise to
tension, dissension and division that will often even tum
into open conflict. Spiritual goods, on the other hand, are
open to unlimited enjoyment by many at the same time,
without diminution of the goods themselves. Indeed, the
more people share in such goods, the more they are
enjoyed and drawn upon, the more then do those goods
show their indestructible and immortal worth. This truth
is confirmed, for example, by the works of creativity — I
mean by the works of thought, poetry, music, and the
figurative arts, fruits of man’s spirit.
15. A critical analysis of our modern civilization shows
that in the last 100 years it has contributed as never
before to the development of material good, but that it
has also given rise, both in theory and still more in
practice, to a series of attitudes in which sensitivity to the
spiritual dimension of human existence is diminished to a
great or less extent, as a result of certain premises which
reduce the meaning of human life chiefly to the many
different material and economic factors - I mean to the
demands of production, the market, consumption, the
accumulation of riches or of the growing bureaucracy
with which an attempt is made to regulate these very
processes. Is this not the result of having subordinated
man to one single conception and sphere of values?
16. What is the link between these reflections and the
cause of peace and war? Since, as I have already stated,
material goods by their very nature provoke conditionings
and divisions, the struggle to obtain these goods becomes
inevitable in the history of humanity. If we cultivate this
onesided subordination of man to material goods alone,
we shall be incapable of overcoming this state of need. We
shall be able to attenuate it and avoid it in particular
cases, but we shall not succeed in eliminating it
systemtically and radically, unless we emphasize more and
pay greater honor, before everyone’s eyes, in the sight of
every society, to the second dimension of the goods of
man: the dimension that does not divide people but puts
them into communication with each other, associates
them and unites them.
I consider that the famous opening words of the
Charter of the United Nations, in which the peoples of the
United Nations, determined to save succeeding
generations from the scourage of war solemnly reaffirmed
faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and
worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men
and women and of nations large and small, are meant to
stress this dimension.
Indeed, the fight against incipient wars cannot be
carried out on a merely superficial level, by treating the
symptoms. It must be done in a radical way, by attacking
the causes. The reason I have called attention to the
dimension constituted by spiritual realities is my concern
for the cause of peace, peace which is built up by men and
women uniting around what is most fully and profoundly
human, around what rises them above the world about
them and determines their indestructible grandeur —
indestructible in spite of the death to which everyone on
earth is subject. I would like to add that the Catholic
Church and, I think I can say, the whole of Christianity
sees in this very domain its own particular task. The
Second Vatican Council helped to establish what the
Christian faith has in common with the various
non-Christian religions in this aspiration. The church is
therefore grateful to all who show respect and good will
with regard to this mission of hers and do not impede it or
make it difficult. An analysis of the history of mankind,
especially at its recent stage, shows how important is the
duty of revealing more fully the range of the goods that
are linked with the spiritual dimension of human
existence. It shows how important this task is for building
peace and how serious is any threat to human rights. Any
violation of them, even in a peace situation, is a form of
warfare against humanity.
It seems that in the modern world there are two main
threats. Both concern human rights in the field of
international relations and human rights within the
individual states or societies.
17. The first of these systematic threats against human
rights is linked in an overall sense with the distribution of
material goods. This distribution is frequently unjust both
within individual societies and on the planet as a whole.
Everyone knows that these goods are given to man not
only as nature’s bounty; they are enjoyed by him chiefly
as the fruit of his many activities, ranging from the
simplest manual and physical labor to the most
complicated forms of industrial production, and to the
highly qualified and specialized research and study.
Various forms of inequality in the possession of material
goods, and in the enjoyment of them, can often be
explained by different historical and cultural causes and
circumstances. But, while these circumstances can
diminish the moral responsibility of people today, they do
not prevent the situations of inequality from being
marked by injustice and social injury.
People must become aware that economic tensions
within countries and in the relationship between states
and even between entire continents contain within
themselves substantial elements that restrict or violate
human rights. Such elements are the exploitation of labor
and many other abuses that affect the dignity of the
human person. It follows that the fundamental criterion
for comparing social, economic and political systems is
not, and cannot be, the criterion of hegemony and
imperialism; it can be, and indeed it must be, the
humanistic criterion, namely the measure in which each
system is really capable of reducing, restraining and
eliminating as far as possible the various forms of
exploitation of man and of ensuring for him through
work, not only the just distribution of the indispensable
material goods, but also a participation, in keeping with
his dignity, in the whole process of production and in the
social life that grows up around that process. Let us not
forget that, although man depends on the resources of the
material world for his life, he cannot be their slave, but he
must be their master. The words of the book of Genesis,
“Fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28), are in a
sense a primary and essential directive in the field of
economy and of labor policy.
18. Hunanity as a whole, and the individual nations,
have certainly made remarkable progress in this field
during the last 100 years. But it is a field in which there is
never any lack of systematic threats and violations of
human rights. Disturbing factors are frequently present in
the form of the frightful disparities between excessively
rich individuals and groups on the one hand, and on the
other hand the majority made up of the poor or indeed of
the destitute, who lack food and opportunities for work
and education and are in great numbers condemned to
hunger and disease. And concern is also caused at times by
the radical separation of work from property, by man’s
indifference to the production enterprise to which he is
linked only by a work obligation, without feeling that he
is working for a good that will be his or for himself. It is
no secret that the abyss separating the minority of the
excessively rich from the multitude of the destitute is a
very grave symptom in the life of any society. This must
also be said with even greater insistence with regard to the
abyss separating countries and regions of the earth. Surely
the only way to overcome this serious disparity between
areas of satiety and areas of hunger and depression is
through coordinated cooperation by all countries. This
requires above all else a unity inspired by an authentic
perspective of peace. Everything will depend on whether
these differences and contrasts in the sphere of the
possession of goods will be systematically reduced
through truly effective means, on whether the belts of
hunger, malnutrition, destitution, underdevelopment,