Statement by the Holy See Delegation
before the 45th session of the Commission on Population and Development
of the Economic and Social Council
New York, 24 April 2012

My delegation is grateful that, in his report on the “Monitoring of population programmes, focusing on adolescents and youth” (E/CN.9/2012/5), the Secretary-General affirms the importance of families in the formation of adolescents and youth and thus the rights and responsibilities of their parents. The family is the original nucleus of society, the primordial foundation of social ties and the locus where the relations of tomorrow--nuptial, parental, filial, fraternal--are cultivated.

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Keynote Address of H.E. Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, Apostolic Nuncio,
at the 2012 National Catholic Prayer Breakfast
Washington, DC, 19 April 2012

This morning’s focus on threats to religious liberty, at home and abroad, lies close to my own heart and is much on the mind of the Holy Father. I stand before you as your first non-American keynote speaker, I come from a nation in which Christians are a minority and I have spent a number of years living in countries where being Christian and publicly practicing the faith is to risk one’s life.

Statement by the Holy See Delegation at the
56th session of the Commission on the Status of Women
On Item 3(a)(i): Follow-up to the Fourth World Conference on Women
and to the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly entitled
“Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century”
New York, 6 March 2012

In addressing the priority theme for this session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), it is important to recognize that rural women make up a large portion of the world’s population. The particular challenges they face are well documented: hunger in general and poverty in particular, as noted in the report of the Secretary-General on the empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication, development and current challenges (E/CN.6/2012/3, 5), remain a massive and predominantly rural phenomenon.

Read the rest of the remarks here.