HOLY SEE INTERVENTION AT HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION

VATICAN CITY, APR 14, 1999 (VIS) - Made public today was Archbishop Giuseppe Bertello's intervention on April 8 at the 55th session of the Human Rights Commission, currently underway in Geneva, Switzerland. The Holy See permanent observer to the Office of the United Nations and Specialized Institutions in Geneva spoke at the assembly dedicated to economic, social and cultural rights.

Speaking French, the archbishop highlighted the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and said such rights "are no longer considered only as an enunciation of principles, sometimes abstract, but as a concrete aim to achieve. What is more, post-colonialism and socialization have helped peoples to come close together and to make them aware of the injustice that a part of humanity inflicts on the other part." He also remarked how the mass media continues to furnish "upsetting images" of the suffering populations in under-developed areas of the world. "Putting economic and social rights into practice thus remains a dream for the greater part of humanity."

Archbishop Bertello stressed that "the establishment of a just economic and social order is an inescapable condition for the security and prosperity of the human person." He also emphasized a truth which, he said, "is also dear to the Christian social doctrine: all men are members of the same family and must form a true community. If they are equal in their dignity, they are also equal vis-a-vis the means which are necessary to realize their vocation in a relation based on equality, beyond all temptation of domination or paternalism."

He spoke of international debt, "which only drives people deeper into their mass poverty, paralyzing every effort to bring them out of it. ... International cooperation must not be limited to better the material conditions of life of populations, it must also reinforce their social structures."

In conclusion, he stated that "the eradication of poverty will only be achieved when the poor themselves will be able to take their destiny in hand, linking them to the concept and the putting into place of programs which respect their values and traditions."

DELSS;HUMAN RIGHTS; ECONOMY;...;GENEVA; BERTELLO;VIS;19990414;Word: 350;