HOLY SEE DELEGATION AT U.N. CONFERENCE ON "WOMEN 2000"

VATICAN CITY, JUN 10, 2000 (VIS) - Made public today was the speech made yesterday in New York by Kathryn Hoomkwap on behalf of the Holy See delegation to the 23rd Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly entitled "Women 2000: Equality, Development and Peace for the 21st Century." This session was held to evaluate the progress made since the Fourth World Conference on Women which was held in Beijing in September 1995.

Mrs. Hoomkwap said that "the 'living heart' of the initiatives called for in the Beijing Platform for Action correspond to the multiplicity of services the Catholic Church has historically provided to women." However, she expressed the delegation's "fear for the health and well being of children in Africa, ... the continued prevalence of diseases, ... the number of people, especially the children, who suffer from malnutrition, ... the growing conflicts" and the number of "those who cannot read and write."

"My delegation," she affirmed, "strongly supports the document's provisions condemning all forms of violence against women, upholding women's rights to economic and political empowerment, its measures against poverty and its references - brief though they are - to high mortality rates among girls and women due both to chronic illness and to widespread infections, including tropical diseases."

"However," the Holy See delegate added, "the 'Women 2000' document, like the Beijing platform, would emphasize, seemingly endlessly, one issue - sexual and reproductive health - to the detriment of a holistic view of the health of women and their families which is so desperately needed to alleviate women's fears."

"We must proceed with full and complete human development - not only social and economic, but also spiritual. The Holy See renews its pledge to help find an end to hunger, to find a way towards educational opportunities for all, toward remedy and comfort for the suffering caused by sickness and disease, and through these means to continually seek to extinguish the fear that keep us from celebrating life as the gift that it is."

"In closing," stated Mrs. Hoomkwap, "the Holy See delegation wishes to state that nothing that the Holy See has done in the 'Women 2000' process should be understood as en endorsement of concepts it does not support for moral reasons. Nothing is to be understood to imply that the Holy See endorses abortion or has in any way changed its moral position concerning abortion or contraceptives. The Holy See reaffirms its belief that life begins at conception and that every human life must be protected from the earliest moments to the end of the life cycle."

DELSS;WOMEN 2000;...;UN; HOOMKWAP;VIS;20000612;Word: 430;