Remarks of His Excellency Archbishop Celestino Migliore

Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations

on the 40^th Anniversary of Gaudium et Spes

Side-Event

Church of the Holy Family

New York City, 3 March 2005

Mr Moderator, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends and colleagues,

          A warm welcome to all of you, both speakers and participants in this, the second part of the today’s side event on the Integral Path of Sustainable Development.  My thanks go once again to AVSI, New Humanity and Pax Romana for helping put together this part of the afternoon, in what I hope will be a thought-provoking and stimulating series of interventions.  I should also like to thank the pastor here, Father Robert Robbins, for graciously allowing us the use of the church of the Holy Family, the parish church as it were of the family of nations at the UN.

          As we heard earlier from Archbishop Martin, much of the Catholic Church’s recent social teaching has been based upon the powerful message contained in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the modern world, the document, now forty years old, that we now know as Gaudium et Spes. It was radical at the time and, due to its foresight, it remains remarkably fresh forty years later.

          It looked into the questions of economic and social life (GS 63-71), political life (GS 73-76), peace and the community of nations (GS 77-89).  Remedies foreseen then now appear prophetic: the need for social justice (GS 83), the importance of international organisations in resolving the world's problems (GS 83), the need for greater international cooperation in economic matters, assistance in development that is not an imposition from outside the country in question (GS 85), the responsibility of the international community for the coordination and stimulation of development in poorer countries, the responsibility  of poorer countries themselves (GS 86) and so on.   The language of 1965 is not that of the current UN-speak on the subject, but the issues themselves are almost identical underneath the terminology, and just as relevant as ever.

          Since Stockholm in 1972, through Rio in 1992 and then Johannesburg in 2002, it’s as if thought on development had been “developing” as awareness of the environment was factored into the need for development.  The Rio declaration states that “human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development”.  In 1965, Gaudium et Spes said, “For the greater man's power becomes, the farther his individual and community responsibility extends.”  We have the right to development, but we have a responsibility to ourselves, to each other, to creation and finally to the Creator.

          But let me not delay or pre-empt what our speakers have to say. Let us now listen to them, with a view to considering the promotion of the common good in this field from the perspective of people of faith.  Thank you.