As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is celebrating its 75th birthday, the Vatican’s Permanent Representative in Geneva, Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, organized a symposium that aimed to focus on both human rights and care for creation.
The Dec. 8 symposium, co-sponsored by the Sovereign Order of Malta, Caritas in Veritate Foundation, and the International Catholic Migration Commission, formed part of week-long commemorations of the declaration, signed Dec. 10, 1948, widely seen as a foundational text for modern human and civil rights.
In his introduction, Archbishop Balestrero said the 30-article landmark document, adopted by the U.N.’s General Assembly, had recognized the “intrinsic dignity of the human person” in the wake of World War II.
However, he added that the global situation 75 years later looked “undeniably dire” and said the Vatican also believed human beings were “relational in nature,” and existed “not as isolated rights-bearers, but in a web of connections and relationships.”