A day after making history as the first pontiff to address Congress, Pope Francis on Friday morning issued a sweeping call to the UN for peace and environmental justice, as he placed blame for the exploitation of natural resources on “a selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity“.
Standing before the General Assembly in his first speech here, Francis endorsed UN efforts to reach a global compact to fight poverty and climate change. He also chided world powers for putting political interests ahead of human suffering in West Asia.
He repeated his concern over persecuted Christians and, foremost, demanded that action be taken on behalf of the global poor. “They are cast off by society, forced to live off what is discarded and suffer unjustly from the consequences of abuse of the environment,“ Francis said. “These phenomena are part of today's widespread and quietly growing culture of waste.“
Francis also sharply rebuked the world powers on the Security Council for their failure to agree on a peaceful transition to the wars in West Asia, apparently referring specifically to Syria and Iraq, where people “have faced the alternative either of fleeing or of paying for their adhesions to good and to peace by their own lives, or by enslavement.“
By contrast, Francis praised the recent nuclear agreement reached between Iran and world powers as “proof of the potential of political good will and of law“.
For environmentalists, Francis's visit to the US has been a boon. Invoking the principle of international law and equality among nations, Francis endorsed the concept of “right of the environment“. “Any harm done to the environment, therefore, is harm done to humanity ,“ he said, later reprising his argument that the global poor are the biggest victims of environmental destruction. “A selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and the disadvantaged,“ he said.
Francis became the fifth pope to visit the UN and his appearance brought enormous security precautions. People lined up before dawn to enter the building.
Also, for the first time, the flag of the Holy See was raised above the UN headquarters. As a“nonmember observer state,“ the Holy See has limited rights, but flying the flag was made possible by a resolution advanced by the delegation from Palestine, the only other nonmember observer state.
