Vatican City, Dec 15, 2003 / 22:00 pm
In his Message for World Day of Peace, celebrated each year on January 1st, Pope John Paul II called for a reform of the United Nations in order to prevent the rule of the most powerful.
The message, entitled “An Ever Timely Commitment: Teaching Peace,” was made public on Tuesday by Cardinal Renato R. Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and has been published in Italian, French, English, German, Spanish and Portuguese.
For the first time the Pontiff addressed the message not only to the “Leaders of the nations”, jurists and teachers of the youth, but also “to you too, men and women tempted to turn to the unacceptable means of terrorism and thus compromise at its root the very cause for which you are fighting!”
According to Cardinal Martino, the Pope considers “the institution of the United Nations one of the most relevant fruits of international law, after the tragedy of World War II, whose objective is ‘the prohibition of resorting to force’ even with two exceptions: ‘the natural law of legitimate defense’ and ‘the system of collective security’.”