Pope Francis criticized the United Nations numerous times on Friday for “idle chatter” and relying on resolutions that have done nothing to end the “tremendous atrocities” committed throughout the world.
“We can rest content with the bureaucratic exercise of drawing up long lists of good proposals — goals, objectives and statistical indicators — or we can think [of] a single … solution,” he said, condemning a “declarationist nominalism” that allows some to salve their consciences.
“In wars and conflicts there are individual persons, our brothers and sisters, men and women, young and old, boys and girls who weep, suffer and die,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks. “Human beings who are easily discarded when our only response is to draw up lists of problems, strategies and disagreements.”
He called on leaders to put an end to the “phenomenon of social and economic exclusion, with its baneful consequences: human trafficking, the marketing of human organs and tissues, the sexual exploitation of boys and girls, slave labor, including prostitution, the drug and weapons trade, terrorism and international organized crime.”
“We need to ensure that our institutions are truly effective in the struggle against all these scourges,” he said, criticizing “idle chatter which serves as a cover for all kinds of abuse and corruption.”Calling war a “negation of all rights and a dramatic assault on the environment,” Francis said that leaders “must work tirelessly to avoid war between nations and between peoples.”
The Charter of the United Nations, if applied “without ulterior motives,” could be a useful starting point to ending war, said Francis. But he said that too often leaders with “spurious intentions” apply it as “an instrument to be used whenever it proves favorable” and avoided otherwise. This opens a “true Pandora’s box.”
There is “hard evidence [that] military and political interventions” without international support have negative effects, Francis said in his segue calling on the international body to do more to protect Christians throughout the “entire Middle East” and Africa. Many have been forced to flee, had their homes and churches destroyed, and been enslaved, he said.
Their plight “should serve as a grave summons to an examination of conscience on the part of those charged with the conduct of international affairs,” said Francis. He listed the conflicts in the Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Libya and South Sudan.
Francis praised the Iran deal and said he hoped it would be “lasting” while calling for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The war against drugs is frequently forgotten, yet causes human trafficking, money laundering, facilitates the arms trade, corruption, and child exploitation, Francis said. It is a war “taken for granted and poorly fought.”
The pope said men and women must be allowed to be “dignified agents of their own destiny.” Leaders must work to ensure that there is religious and spiritual freedom, support for the family, adequate food and drinking water, dignified employment and wages, and “lodging, labor and land.” He also spoke of a “right to education — also for girls,” which he noted are excluded in some places.
All these things are underpinned by “the right to life … we could call the right to existence of human nature itself,” he said.
The author of Laudato Si, an encyclical on the environment, called on leaders to recognize a “true ‘right of the environment.'”
A “relentless power of exclusion” has led to the misuse and destruction of the environment, and the exclusion of the weak and handicapped, the pope said as he condemned “a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity.”
“They are part of today’s widespread and quietly growing ‘culture of waste,'” said Pope Francis. “Today’s world presents us with many false rights and — at the same time — broad sectors which are vulnerable, victims of power badly exercised: for example, the natural environment and the vast ranks of the excluded.”
Just a few blocks away from Wall Street, the pope called on “international financial agencies” to ensure that countries are “not subjected to oppressive lending systems.”
In conclusion, Francis said the world must reject the “creation of an all-powerful elite” and work to “respect for the sacredness of every human life, of every man and every woman, the poor, the elderly, children, the infirm, the unborn, the unemployed, the abandoned, those considered disposable because they are only considered as part of a statistic. This common home of all men and women must also be built on the understanding of a certain sacredness of created nature.”
The speech was almost 4,000 words long, and “tightly crafted” ahead of time, according to the Vatican’s U.N. ambassador and apostolic nuncio Archbishop Bernadito Auza.
Ahead of the speech, Auza chided the international organization for “lots of failures.”
“There is no greater failure of the U.N. than to be incapable, unable to prevent what is going on in the Middle East now and North Africa,” the Vatican’s U.N. ambassador and apostolic nuncio Archbishop Bernadito Auza told the Associated Press earlier this month.
In addition to his role as head of the Catholic Church, the Pope is also the leader of the Holy See, which is not a member of the United Nations but a permanent observer state. Thus the Vatican has the right to attend all sessions of the United Nations General Assembly, the United Nations Security Council, and the United Nations Economic and Social Council and sends an ambassador to the global body. This is the fifth papal visit to the U.N., and the first by Pope Francis.
Francis’ visit at the United Nations was only two and a half hours long, the shortest papal visit in history. After leaving the United Nations, Pope Francis traveled to the site of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks at Ground Zero, a visit he specifically requested.
The interfaith service to be held there will hopefully impact perceptions of the relationships between “different religions, especially in our times,” Auza said.
