Pope at U.N.:
A call for peace and justice.
UNITED NATIONS — A day after making history as the first pontiff to address Congress, Pope Francis on Friday morning issued a sweeping call to the United Nations 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 U.N. 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 the Middle East.
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 became the fifth pope to visit the United Nations, and his appearance brought enormous security precautions and an electric atmosphere. People lined up before dawn to enter the building. Police boats floated along the East River that flows past the United Nations campus in Manhattan.
The senior U.N. police officer barked into his cell phone at the employee entrance as an army of police, Secret Service and other security officers patrolled the area.
For the first time, the flag of the Holy See was raised above the U.N. 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 Palestinian delegation, the only other nonmember observer state.
Francis’ global agenda on poverty and the environment is already well known but the rostrum of the United Nations gave him a global stage to articulate an agenda that mostly dovetails with the body’s Sustainable Development Goals, and with the program of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Francis praised the accomplishments of the United Nations and its efforts to resolve conflicts and set human rights principles. Without that, Francis said, “mankind would not have been able to survive the unchecked use of its own possibilities.”
Francis also sharply rebuked the world powers on the Security Council for their failure to agree on a peaceful transition to the wars in the Middle East.