Next month, Pope Benedict XVI will become the third leader of the Catholic Church to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York, following Pope Paul VI in 1965, and Pope John Paul II in 1979 and 1995.
Vatican officials have not indicated what Benedict might say in his April 18 speech, but if his past statements are any guide, he will address some of the U.N.’s most prominent agenda items, such as arms control and the fight against global poverty and disease, along with issues of particular interest to the Holy See, such as religious freedom and abortion.
Whatever the precise content, Benedict’s U.N. speech is bound to reflect a vision of peace and development drawn from Catholic social teaching — priorities that cut across the usual geographic, political or ideological boundaries of the world community.
Like his predecessors, Benedict enthusiastically supports the U.N.’s founding mission, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and its central operating principle of multilateral diplomacy.
Perhaps’s the pope can obtain permission of Bp. Sisk to minister in New York and avoid the dreaded crossing of boundaries. :cheese:
Boundary crossing? That can’t be right.
The article seems to suggest that the Pope’s address will be a laundry list of agenda items, similar to what the U.S. President’s State of the Union address has become. I predict it will be quite the opposite– that it will be a compact, tightly reasoned argument for a particular point, perhaps something related to the viability of the U.N.s mandate in the post-Cold War / binary superpower age. Of course, I also predict that the press will try to pick agenda items out of it, will find that difficult to do coherently, and will bury the whole thing on page A12.