Pope to UN: Use COVID crisis to come out better, not worse

Pope Francis urged world leers on Friday to use coronavirus emergency as an opportunity to reform injustices of global economy and “perverse logic” of nuclear deterrence doctrine, warning that increased isolationist responses to problems “must not prevail".

Francis laid out his appeal for greater involvement and influence of United Nations in protecting poor, migrants and environment in a videotaped speech Friday to UN General Assembly, held mostly virtually this year because of pandemic.

Francis said world has a choice to make as it emerges from COVID-19 crisis and dresses grave economic impact it has h on planet's most vulnerable: greater solidarity, dialogue and multilateralism, or self-retreat into greater nationalism, individualism and elitism.

latter, he said, “would certainly be detrimental to whole community, causing self-inflicted wounds on everyone. It must not prevail". Ever since virus struck Italy in late February, Francis has sought to show interconnectedness of pandemic with health of planet and its people.

His message is that crisis provides a chance “to come out better or worse,” and that re are plenty of reasons to work to come out better.

“ pandemic has shown us that we cannot live without one anor, or worse still, pitted against one anor,” he said. “This is why, at this critical juncture, it is our duty to rethink future of our common home and our common project.” Francis is expected to lay out furr his vision for solidarity and post-COVID world in an encyclical to be released October 4. In a way, his UN speech was something of an executive summary or blueprint for what is expected, a brief overview of his core concerns of economic justice, environmental protection and care for society's most marginal.

Francis reaffirmed Catholic Church's opposition to abortion — one of Vatican's key ideological points of contention with United Nations. He said recourse to abortion h only increased in pandemic, saying it was “s” that some countries were promoting abortion as an essential service to be provided even during health emergency.

“It is troubling to see how simple and convenient it has become for some to deny existence of a human life as a solution to problems that can and must be solved for both mor and her unborn child,” he said.

Francis called for basic health care for all, reduction, if not forgiveness of debt for world's poorest countries and a reform of Bretton-Woods financial institutions which he said are only escalating inequalities between rich and poor.

“Now is a fitting time to renew architecture of international finance,” he said.

He repeated his demand for an end to doctrine of nuclear deterrence, which he articulated most fully during his 2019 visit to Japan at memorial dedicated to victims of atomic bombing in Hiroshima.

“We need to dismantle perverse logic that links personal and national security to possession of weaponry,” he said. “Nuclear deterrence, in particular, creates an ethos of fear based on threat of mutual annihilation; in this way, it ends up poisoning relationships between peoples and obstructing dialogue.” 

Image Credits: AP