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ECOSOC Jun-30-2004 (450 words) xxxn
Vatican: 'Poverty of imagination' hinders efforts to end real poverty
By Tracy Early
Catholic News Service
UNITED NATIONS (CNS) -- The Vatican said June 29 that overcoming world poverty is hindered by "a certain poverty of imagination among the more fortunate peoples of the world."
Addressing the U.N. Economic and Social Council, or ECOSOC, during its session on least-developed countries, the Vatican also blamed "the vicious cycle of material poverty" in those countries, but also a lack of empathy on the part of others and "an inability at times to recognize the common humanity" of all of the world's people.
The statement was presented by Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard law professor who headed the Vatican delegation to the ECOSOC meeting.
Glendon, whose earlier services to the Vatican included leading its delegation at the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women, was named by Pope John Paul II in March as president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, making her the first woman to head one of the major pontifical academies.
ECOSOC was holding its annual substantive session at U.N. headquarters in New York June 28-July 23. The meeting opened with a review of goals set at a 2001 meeting in Brussels, Belgium, for eradicating poverty in the 50 least-developed countries.
Glendon said action plans such as the one approved in Brussels for the 2001-10 decade had a potential for "unlocking the prison of poverty" for the 700 million people in those countries.
But she said turning the key to unlock that prison required the help of the development partners of the impoverished countries.
"The Holy See, as a partner with long-standing special concern for the poorest people in the poorest countries, recognizes that a broad range of cooperative economic and political measures are required," Glendon said.
For financial aid to have an impact, it "must be channeled more effectively into well-prepared, productive investments that provide clear benefits to the communities for which it was intended," she said.
Glendon added, however, that "any measure to promote authentic and lasting development must be protective of human dignity and culture."
Calling the poor countries rich in human potential, she said, "the liberation of that potential must entail careful attention to the situation of women and girls."
In addressing their situation, the international community should draw on the experience and resources of faith-based initiatives in education, health care and relief, she said.
Glendon reaffirmed the Vatican's "historic commitment" to both helping "the poorest members of the human family" and seeking to "open up the hearts of the privileged."
The need, she said, is for "a change of heart, that the international community may be ever bolder, more generous, more energetic in its struggle to finally end the division of the world into areas of poverty and plenty."
END
Copyright (c) 2004 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service.
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