Mar 13, 2008 / 05:50 am
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi encouraged the UN’s Human Rights Council on Tuesday to continue promoting the human right to mental and physical health. However, he challenged the Council to include religious organizations in discussions on the topic and to allocate a more proportionate share of the resources to them.
The archbishop, who is the head of the Holy See’s permanent observer mission to the United Nations in Geneva, made his comments in light of a recent report on “the Right of Everyone to the Enjoyment of the Highest Attainable Standard of Physical and Mental Health”.
He said his delegation was pleased with the report’s identification of the right to health as a “fundamental building block of sustainable development, poverty reduction, and economic prosperity.”
A similar idea, the prelate noted, was expressed in a speech by Pope Benedict XVI, where the Pope said, “the building of a more secure future for the human family means first and foremost working for the integral development of peoples, especially through the provision of adequate health care [and] the elimination of pandemics like AIDS.”