NEW YORK—It is not every day that the Pope visits the United States. In fact, this past week saw the first visit of German-born Pope Benedict XVI to the United States, preceded by the visit of Pope John Paul II to St. Louis, Mo. in 1999. Whether Catholic or non-Catholic, the sheer popularity of this man—leader of approximately 1 billion Catholics worldwide and head of state of the Vatican—turns such a visit into a cultural phenomenon.
The main theme behind the Pope's U.S. visit, which covered Washington, D.C. and New York City spanning five days from Apr. 15 to 20, was a call for human rights. This overarching message was evident from the Pope's address to the United Nations, which very specifically called for an end to "grave and sustained violations of human rights." It was also evident in his visit with people sexually abused by Catholic clergy—an unprecedented if by some standards insufficient symbol of the Pope's own respect for the human rights of those who were sexually abused.
Is it any surprise though that a religious leader would bring a message about inherent human dignity while under the secular microscope of international media? The answer is, not really.
To some extent, in 1995, Pope John Paul II brought the same message to the United Nations headquarters in New York that Pope Benedict would bring 13 years later. So did Pope John Paul II in 1979 and so did Pope Paul VI in 1965.
But, what has changed significantly is the historical context and nuances of the message. In 1965 and 1979, Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II, respectively, addressed the United Nations during the Cold War, when people were living in the shadows of World War II and under the threat of a full scale nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States. The first address was also during the Vietnam War.
Accordingly, a major theme in both Popes' messages was disarmament—the deconstruction of nuclear warheads. "No more war!" said Pope Paul VI to the United Nations in 1965.
In 1995, when Pope John Paul II addressed the United Nations, people were living after the dissolution of the Soviet bloc and in the shadow of the Cold War. With World War II merely a distant memory, the theme of human rights in Pope John Paul II's speech took an increasingly important role—not simply as an antidote to the impulse for war but as an end in itself.
"There are indeed universal human rights, rooted in the nature of the person, rights which reflect the objective and inviolable demands of a universal moral law," said Pope John Paul II. "For the non-violent revolutions of 1989 demonstrated that the quest for freedom cannot be suppressed. It arises from a recognition of the inestimable dignity and value of the human person."
Now it is 2008, and Pope Benedict XVI has left the shadow of even the Cold War behind. In fact his speech to the United Nations makes not one mention of the word "war," while the words "human rights" appeared 10 times, not including six references to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights penned by the United Nations in 1948. To put it another way, the meaning behind the Pope's U.S. visit this month is a complete shift from a message of "No more war!" to "No more human rights abuses!"—although Pope Benedict XVI did not use words quite as succinctly as Pope Paul VI did in 1965.
Last Friday, at the United Nations, the Pope said, "The promotion of human rights remains the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security."
"Indeed, the victims of hardship and despair, whose human dignity is violated with impunity, become easy prey to the call to violence, and they can then become violators of peace," he said. The Pope took his human rights message one step further, when he highlighted the freedom of religion as a human right. "Human rights, of course, must include the right to religious freedom," said the Pope. "It should never be necessary to deny God in order to enjoy one's rights."
His statements were quite likely directed, at least partially, at the People's Republic of China, where the Chinese communist regime has, to the Pope's dismay, appointed state-controlled bishops—a power only held by the Vatican. The state religion in communist China is atheism, and all major figures in Chinese society are expected to be part of the Chinese Communist Party and, in theory, be atheist.
"The rights associated with religion are all the more in need of protection if they are considered to clash with a prevailing secular ideology or with majority religious positions of an exclusive nature," said the Pope. "The full guarantee of religious liberty cannot be limited to the free exercise of worship, but has to give due consideration to the public dimension of religion, and hence to the possibility of believers playing their part in building the social order."
In other words, in nations like China, the Pope would probably like to see a government where Catholics have at least a chance to hold positions in government. This is a far cry from the aspirations of Pope Paul VI in 1965, who beseeched both sides in the Cold War to "let the weapons fall from your hands," and it's this overriding call for human rights that marked the Pope's visit last week to the United States.
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