Archbishop of Sydney

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
60th Anniversary of U.N.O. Mt 10. 37-42

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
26 June 2005

My first instinct when I studied these readings in the light of our celebration today of the 60th Anniversary of the United Nations Organisation was to think that they would not have been at the top of my list if I was choosing the readings.  After pondering the situation further that would still be my position, because there are other passages in the New Testament which would be highly suitable, such as Jesus’ injunction that we must love our neighbour as ourself and his definition to his young Jewish questioner of “neighbour” as someone who belonged to a nearby group the Samaritans, who were traditional enemies of the Jews.

However mainline Christians, like ourselves as Catholics, cannot simply airbrush out of existence those parts of the Old and New Testament which we find offensive or irrelevant or perplexing.  We have every right to use our intelligence, to study the historical context, the place of the teaching in the total scheme of things etc., but we have to grapple with the teachings as loyal followers of Christ.

The passage from the gospel of St. Matthew is especially confronting for the worldly wise of today, who are often tempted to admire the benefits of religion from a distance and put the question of God in the “too hard” basket.

Jesus is claiming that loyalty to him as Son of the Father, the Messiah of the one true God can be more important than love of father, mother, children, on those rare occasions when family loyalty urges us to do the wrong thing.  Jesus then went on to explain the necessity of self discipline, self-sacrifice and his complete rejection of self-centredness.  It is in the subjugation of our egoism, the loss of self for a good cause, that we come to a fuller life.  Jesus is not urging us to become misanthropes, to develop chips on our shoulders because we have been hurt or ignored; much less is he keen for us to hate ourselves, to empty out our proper self-esteem.  What he is saying is that hatred and its attendant selfishness are corrosive and poisonous and that human flourishing comes from escaping out of a hall of mirrors to love and serve our brothers and sisters in the world around us.

So I think it is good for all of us, and for those connected with the U.N.O. to be reminded of the compatibility of the Christian commandment to universal love with the Charter of the United Nations and it is good for all U.N.O. officials to be reminded gently that their work too will be evaluated in eternity by the one true God.  In other words they have responsibilities which go far beyond their dues to their constituent members; the U.N.O. has duties to all human kind today and even to the humans of the future (through ecological responsibility) and they exercise their responsibilities under God.

The United Nations was set up in 1945 when 50 countries’ representatives met in San Francisco to draw up the U.N. Charter.  A little later Poland also signed up making 51 original members.  Today 191 countries have official membership, every country in the world.  The Vatican City State, the tiny enclave in Rome where the Pope resides, has observer status at the U.N., a reality which is much appreciated by Catholics throughout the world.

Four purposes were set forth in the Charter: to maintain international peace and security; to develop friendly relations between nations; to cooperate in the solving of humanitarian problems, especially through promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms; and harmonizing the actions of nations for these common ends.

The U.N. was set up immediately after the tragedy of the Second World War, when 50 million people died, the second such tragedy in the 20th century, which proved to be the most violent in history.  It was a successor organisation to the League of Nations, which was totally unable to prevent the Second World War.

The U.N.O. is an imperfect organisation because it is made up of human beings like ourselves.  Its record is spotted and controversial, especially through the toleration or encouragement its agencies give to abortion.  But it has helped keep the peace.

We have had many limited wars during the last sixty years, but no Third World War.  Just last night at half time at the football a young year seven lad, whom I did not know, asked me how God would judge the soldiers on both sides of World War Two.  I explained that most would have felt they were doing their duty and that it was beyond our capacity to judge these things, which are better left to God.  He agreed and pointed out the importance of living at peace and not being in those tragic and extreme situations.  He was right and we thank God for the contribution the U.N. has made to maintaining peace.

I was in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the day after the first U.N. military contingent had arrived to help stabilise the move to democracy after Pol Pot’s removal.  These troops were Australian and I felt considerable pride in their Aussie presence, repeated many times elsewhere and most recently in East Timor.

The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights was also a notable and foundational achievement for a number of good reasons.  It has proved to be a standard of judgement to which humanitarians can appeal, although there was nothing like a consensus then, and this would be at least as true today, on the bases or foundations of human rights; and because the Soviet Union, one of the original signatories, was through its empire probably the worst long-term abuse of human rights in history.

There was nothing inevitable about the creation of the U.N.O., although the climate was right.  People wanted peace.  A recent biography of President Roosevelt pointed out that one of his major aims towards the end of WWII was to obtain popular approval in the U.S.A. for a world wide role and prevent the U.S. from lapsing back into isolationism.  Especially in Australia we should be grateful for the role of the U.S.A., the world’s only surviving superpower.  It needs no great feat of imagination to envisage the world dominated by another superpower with values very different from those which inspire the U.S.A.

We have many reasons for gratitude to the U.N.O. and we pray for God’s blessings on their work in the next sixty years.  The centre of play is moving from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and wisdom, dialogue and goodness will be needed as China emerges to superpower status, probably with India and Japan.

Let us pray then for our century and especially that this twenty first century will be much less violent than the twentieth century which has just ended, the most violent in history.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.