Vatican City, Sep 29, 2004 / 22:00 pm
Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, secretary for the Holy See's Relations with States, laid out the Holy See’s policy on global themes on the agenda of the 59th United Nations General Assembly in New York, inlcuding poverty and development, peace, regional armed conflicts, terrorism, and the right to life and freedom of religion.
The theme of poverty and development "affects the right to subsistence of hundreds of millions of human beings, surviving - as best they can - below the threshold of what is necessary, as well as tens of millions of undernourished children unjustly deprived of the right to live."
He said that the world "must find a lasting solution to these inhumane conditions, ... progressing, under the aegis of the U.N. towards a more flexible and more just international trade system."
Total and general disarmament must take place for the achievement of peace in the world, said the Archbishop. "The problem of weapons of mass destruction is clearly to be distinguished from that of conventional weapons,” he said, “but the latter have a terrible and unending contemporary relevance in the numerous armed conflicts that stain the world with blood, and also in terrorism."