Posted on 04/18/2008 1:15:26 PM PDT by BenLurkin
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Countries that act unilaterally on the world stage undermine the authority of the United Nations and weaken the broad consensus needed to confront global problems, Pope Benedict said on Friday.
In a major speech to the U.N. General Assembly, the pope also said the international community sometimes had the duty to intervene when a country could not protect its own people from "grave and sustained violations of human rights."
The pope, who arrived from Washington on the second leg of a six-day U.S. trip, was only the third pontiff in history to address the General Assembly.
Speaking in French and English from the Assembly's green marble podium, he gave a wide-ranging address on issues such as globalization, human rights and the environment.
The international community must be "capable of responding to the demands of the human family through binding international rules," said the 81-year-old pope, who spoke after meeting privately with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
He said the notion of multilateral consensus was "in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few, whereas the world's problems call for interventions in the form of collective action by the international community."
While Benedict did not mention any country, this appeared to refer to the United States, which led the 2003 invasion of Iraq despite a Security Council refusal to approve it.
The Vatican strongly opposed the recourse to war.
Benedict, who met U.S. President George W. Bush during his Washington visit, called for "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."
In an apparent reference to the conflict in the Sudanese region of Darfur, the pope said every state had the "primary duty" to protect its citizens from human rights violations and humanitarian crises but outside intervention was sometimes justified.
"If states are unable to guarantee such protection, the international community must intervene with the juridical means provided in the United Nations Charter and in other international instruments," he said.
He called human rights "the common language and ethical substratum of international relations," and added that promoting human rights was the best way to eliminate inequalities.
"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," he said in an apparent reference to social causes of terrorism.
Benedict called for religious freedom to be protected against secularist views and against majority religions that sideline other faiths -- an apparent reference to Muslim states where some Christian minorities report discrimination.
"It should never be necessary to deny God in order to enjoy one's rights," he said.
Diplomats from some 200 states gave him a standing ovation when he ended his speech by reading the phrase "peace and prosperity" in the six official languages of the United Nations -- English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Russian.
Later, in the U.N. meditation room, he met U.N. staffers and wrote in the visitors' Golden Book a quote from the Prophet Isaiah: "Erit opus iustitiae pax" -- Latin for "Justice will bring about peace."
He stopped to touch a tattered U.N. flag that was flying at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad when a car bomb killed 22 people including 15 U.N. staff in 2003. Among the dead was the U.N. mission chief, Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello.
Later on Friday, the German-born pope was due to visit a New York synagogue just before the start of the Jewish Passover holiday. He will also visit a Manhattan parish founded by German immigrants in 1873.
The pope arrived in Washington on Tuesday on his first visit to the United States as pontiff.
On Thursday, he held a surprise meeting with victims of sexual abuse by priests in a bid to heal scars from a scandal that deeply tarnished the Catholic Church in the United States.
Some three dozen protesters outside the U.N. headquarters held banners including one reading "Child sexual abuse is worse than terrorism."
Some folks should really stick to theology.
“Pope says unilateral acts undermine U.N.”
First, thank God they do undermine the UN which is far more wrong on things than they are right. They have to be forced and dragged kicking and screaming to do the right thing.
Second, I agree with the Pope’s statement, and my solution to it is to get rid of the UN altogether. Let the dictators and extremists and warlords and commies all form their own groups. Watch them circle-jerk each other to see who’s going to pony up the money they want for their globalist and selfish policies.
No, a broad consensus often weakens efforts to confront global problems.
Get a grip, Pope! I'm liking him less and less.
It is hard to believe this Pope could be so duped by the U.N. -— The sooner the U.N. is thrown out of the USA, the better.
Besides, as far as I am concerned the UN does not have ANY authority here.
Since the UN has no authority, what’s the big deal?
Looks like he’s just thrown a turd in the punchbowl of what was shaping up as a great trip.
Good. The UN has no authority.
and weaken the broad consensus needed to confront global problems...
WAKE UP! There IS no consensus within the UN at all.
The only thing that the UN can do is take money.
the pope also said the international community sometimes had the duty to intervene when a country could not protect its own people from “grave and sustained violations of human rights.”
WAKE UP! Millions of people have died - dead as a doornail - because the UN can not intervene anywhere, anytime, anyplace.
The present construct of the UN is fatally flawed and useless to protect anyone at all.
It cannot act, it cannot protect and it cannot provide.
He is too great a man to be naive. I'm stumped.
Before the U.N. can address its purposes and goals it must first be purged of members that are pure evil, by anyone's definition. Is the pontiff suggesting that we are obligated to have a dialog and compromise with the devil?
Dear Pope,
I know you are busy, but please take a moment to evaluate whether the U.N. has done ANYTHING positive in the last 20 years.
Get a grip, folks. This is al-Reuters.
If they were blabbing about Global Warming, would you take their reporting at face value?
If they were blabbing about Quagmire in Iraq, would you take their reporting at face value?
If they were blabbing about the Need for More Gun Control, would you take their reporting at face value?
Here's the complet address to the UN, posted four hours ago, with a grand total of nine replies.
A piece of drivel from al-Reuters about the address, though, gets dozens of replies.
al-Reuters is playing you ALL ... and you just slurp their stuff up.
Turn your brains on, read the entire address ... remember that it is directed to the UN ... not the US.
It looks like this Pope desires a new emphasis on “Liberation Theology.”
Are you surprised that the Pope is not an American first?
Whether it's Reuters or not, it's a FACT that the Pope has consistently been against the US invading Iraq.
Unilateral acts without first trying to gain support? perhaps. But acting upon a moral imperative when that august body demurs? Fair game. In that case it is the UN that undermines itself.
This however is nonsense:
"Since rights and the resulting duties follow naturally from human interaction, it is easy to forget that they are the fruit of a commonly held sense of justice built primarily upon solidarity among the members of society, and hence valid at all times and for all peoples."
Not all peoples are members of the same society. Different societies each have a different sense of justice.
I'm surprised he made such an obvious misstatement -- it represents dangerous wishful thinking on a grand scale.
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