Pope to address United Nations General Assembly on peace, human rights

Pope Benedict XVI celebrates mass with some 48,000 people in Washington, DC

18 April 2008

WINNIPEG-Pope Benedict XVI will address the United Nations in New York Friday on the latest leg of his tour of the United States.

The Pope will make a speech to the General Assembly that officials say will be supportive of the goals and aims of the UN's humanitarian and human rights work around the world.

"He [the Pope] is a great believer in the United Nations," said the Vatican spokesman in New York, Brian Kennerty, "and he believes that relations between nations should be based on more than politics and trade, that there should be a moral and human basis."

The Pope will encourage countries to rise above self-interest, Kennerty said, and work together for the common good.

He is also expected to touch on the U.S. military mission in Iraq, of which he and his predecessor, the late John Paul II, have been implacable opponents, and the Israeli-Palestinian question.

A leading American academic who studies the papacy and the Vatican's role in the world, Jo Renee Formicola of Seton Hall University in New York, said the speech is a key moment for Pope Benedict XVI.

"This is his first real foray onto the world stage," Formicola said. "I think he recognizes this is a historic moment. I don't think it's going to be about divisive issues. It's going to be about all the things that unite us: themes of peace, opportunity, aid and assitance."

Dominated by sex abuse scandal so far

The UN speech was originally intended to be the highlight of a papal visit that has so far been dominated by the Pope addressing concerns about the sexual abuse by clergy in the U.S. Catholic church.

On Thursday night in Washington, the Pope met with victims of clergy sex abuse and prayed with them in scenes fraught with emotion and tension.

Victims' rights advocates in the Catholic church had been harshly critical of the Vatican's handling of the sex abuse scandal and had been demanding such a meeting, as well as punishment for pedophile priests and higher clergy who covered up for them.

The Pope made several pointed references to the issue during public appearences in Washington, D.C.

During his homily at a huge open-air mass at the city's Nationals Park baseball stadium, he expressed his regrets to those who were sexually molested by Catholic clergymen.

"No words of mine could express the pain or harm caused [to victims of abuse]," the Pope said.

In 2004, U.S. bishops released a statistical review that found 4,392 priests had been accused of molesting children in 10,667 cases between 1950 and 2002. The accusations have devastated the Catholic Church and forced the payout of nearly $2 billion in settlements.

During his time in New York, Pope Benedict is to visit Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center towers destroyed in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and speak at a synagogue.

He'll also celebrate another open-air mass on Sunday at Yankee Stadium before heading back to Rome.

Update:

Pope Benedict XVI speaks at the UN (Video)