Pope at United Nations Calls for Global Cooperation and Human Rights, by Sewell Chan, New York Times, April 18, 2008

Pope, at United Nations, Calls for Global Cooperation and Human Rights

By Sewell Chan
New York Times
April 18, 2008

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/pope-leaves-washington-for-new-york/?hp

Pope Benedict XVI began his three-day visit to New York City with a 29-minute speech to the United Nations, where he called for global cooperation on matters of international security and offered a vigorous defense of individual conscience. [Multimedia: Text and Video.]

The pope used his speech — delivered from 11:20 to 11:49 a.m., the first half in French, and the second half in English — to call for global cooperation and to argue against unilateral action, saying, "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."

Pope Benedict XVI at the United Nations General Assembly hall.
Photo by Matt Campbell

Those remarks could be read as an implicit criticism of the United States, though the pope did not mention specifically the conflict in Iraq, which he has publicly questioned several times since he was invested in 2005.

The pope emphasized that he was not ruling out any use of armed intervention to protect human rights, but said such action should arise from global consensus:

The action of the international community and of its institutions, provided that it respects the principles the underlie international order, should never be interpreted as an unwarranted imposition or a limitation of sovereignty. On the contrary, it is indifference or failure to intervene that do the real damage. What is needed is a deeper search for ways of pre-empting and managing conflicts by exploring every possible diplomatic avenue, and giving attention and encouragement to even the faintest sign of dialogue or desire for reconciliation.

Noting that this year marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the pope declared, "Human rights are increasingly being presented as the common language and the ethical substratum of international relations." Although the pope only used the word "terrorism" once in his remarks, he implicitly drew a link between security and human rights:

The promotion of human rights remains the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security. Indeed, the victims of hardship and despair, whose human dignity is violated with impunity, become easy prey to the call to violence, and they can then become violators of peace.

Benedict also portrayed the freedom to actively express one's religious beliefs as a core human freedom. "It should never be necessary to deny God in order to enjoy one's rights," he said. "The rights associated with religion are all the more in need of protection if they are considered to clash with a prevailing secular ideology or with majority religious positions of an exclusive nature."

The pope arrived at the United Nations at 10:23 a.m. Friday and was greeted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who had invited the pope to address the world body. Following a brief private meeting with Mr. Ban, the pope is expected to invoke broad themes of international cooperation in an address to the General Assembly, scheduled for 10:45 a.m. It is the fourth papal visit to the world body, following visits by Pope Paul VI in 1965 and Pope John Paul II in 1979 and 1995.

The pope was introduced by Srgjan Kerim, the president of the General Assembly, and by Mr. Ban.

"We have six official languages but no official religion," Mr. Ban said in introducing the pope at the General Assembly, noting that the world body has a meditation room — which the pope is to visit today — but no chapel. Nonetheless, Mr. Ban said, employees of the United Nations see their work as part of a "mission" of building world peace. "You have called for trust in and commitment to the United Nations," Mr. Ban told the pontiff.

Mr. Ban quoted one of his predecessors, Dag Hammarskjld, who in opening the meditation room at the United Nations, said, "You may see it as an altar, empty not because there is no god, not because it is an altar to an unknown god, but because it is dedicated to the god whom man worships under many names and in many forms."

Amid a heavy police presence, a crowd that included many foreign tourists had gathered earlier outside the United Nations complex, in the Turtle Bay section of Manhattan, for a chance to glimpse the pope before he entered the complex. June Grant, 57, an art gallery director from Rotorua, New Zealand, said she attends Mass regularly. "I think he came in another door, so there's a lot of disappointed people," she remarked. (The police soon asked her to move along.)

Wynnie Price, 70, a retired adminsitative assistant from Keswick, Ontario, said he had once seen Pope John Paul II in Toronto. "I just would like to see the Pope," Mr. Price said. "I've been here two hours, and I'm going home. I will try again on Sunday."

An Alitalia jet carrying Benedict landed at Kennedy International Airport at 9:33 a.m. Friday, marking the start of a three-day visit to New York City, his first as pontiff. Preceded by members of his traveling delegation, the pope emerged at 9:40 a.m. to loud cheers from a crowd waiting on the tarmac. The pontiff lifted up his arms and descended the landing stairs. He was greeted by Cardinal Edward M. Egan, archbishop of New York, and Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn. Two schoolchildren presented flowers to the pope: Kaitlin Karcher, an eighth grader who attends Our Lady of Grace Church in Howard Beach, Queens, and Christopher Jordan, a fifth grader from the Divine Mercy Catholic Academy in Ozone Park, Queens.

Other clergymen scheduled to welcome the pontiff at the airport included Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican's representative at the United Nations, with whom the pope will stay while in New York; Bishop William F. Murphy of the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island; Bishop Gregory John Mansour, the eparch of Saint Maron of Brooklyn, which represents Maronite Catholics; Bishop Manuel Batakian, the eparch of Our Lady of Nareg in New York, a parish of Armenian Catholics; and Thomas V. Daily, the bishop emeritus of Brooklyn.

Gov. David A. Paterson and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg shook hands with the pope. The pope made his way to a nearby Marine helicopter with the presidential seal. The helicopter took the pope to the Wall Street heliport in Lower Manhattan, where the pope landed at 10:09 a.m., and boarded a limousine to travel to the United Nations. Heavily armed teams of law enforcement officers met the pope at the airport, including several workers wearing hazardous-materials suits.

The papal jet left Andrews Air Force Base at 8:44 a.m. Friday, marking the end of an extraordinary visit to Washington, during which he gave encouragement to Catholic educators, celebrated Mass before 46,000 at Nationals Park and — most significantly — held an unannounced meeting with victims of sexual abuse committed by priests in the Boston archdiocese.

The pope's itinerary today is centered around his address to the United Nations. This afternoon, Benedict will visit the Park East Synagogue on East 67th Street — the first visit by a pope to an American synagogue — at the invitation of Rabbi Arthur Schneier, a Holocaust survivor and a longtime champion of religious freedom and interfaith dialogue. The pope's first day in New York is to conclude with an early evening ecumenical prayer service at Saint Joseph's Church, a parish founded by German Catholics in 1873 in the Yorkville section of Manhattan.