9 April 2025
Madam Chair,
My Delegation is pleased to participate in this fifty-eighth session of the Commission on Population and Development, and to share its reflections on the theme “Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages.”
Despite significant progress in improving the health and well-being of populations in recent decades, the Holy See notes with serious concern the health challenges that remain, especially for the most vulnerable populations. Child mortality remains unacceptably high in many regions, with millions of children under the age of five dying each year from preventable causes such as malnutrition and infectious diseases. Rates of maternal mortality also remain too high, with progress stagnating since 2015.[1]
It is imperative that the challenges of ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being are not reduced merely to addressing technical issues. Rather a holistic approach that recognizes the interconnectedness of all aspects of human development is needed. This approach must acknowledge the primacy of the human person and its God-given dignity at every stage of life. By focusing on the integral development of the human person, conditions can be created for individuals and communities to flourish in all aspects of life.
The family must be at the heart of these efforts. As the natural and fundamental unit of society, the family plays an indispensable role in ensuring a healthy life and promoting well-being. It is the family that shapes the physical, emotional and spiritual spheres of the individual. The family is the first school of human virtues, where children learn solidarity, responsibility and care for others. The family also provides the primary care for the most in need, including children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities.
The Holy See calls for the prioritization of policies that strengthen and support families, recognizing that families are the cornerstone of a healthy and flourishing society. Policies that uphold the stability, unity and rights of the family create the conditions necessary for the well-being of all its members and foster the common good. Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being, therefore, requires placing the family at the center of all these efforts.
Madam Chair,
To ensure the health and well-being of all, we must also acknowledge and address the stark health disparities that persist between developing and developed countries. Access to healthcare remains unequal, with millions of people in low-income countries unable to afford or obtain even the most basic medical care.
This inequality is further exacerbated by the crushing debt burdens of developing countries. It is alarming that many developing countries spend more money on servicing their debt than they do on making critical investments in poverty eradication, healthcare, nutrition, clean water and other basic needs necessary to ensure the health and well-being of their people. This is not just an economic injustice, but also a moral scandal that demands urgent action.
In this Jubilee Year celebrated by the Catholic Church, Pope Francis has renewed the call to wealthy nations to “forgive the debt of countries that will never be able to repay them.”[2]Meaningful debt relief would provide developing countries with the fiscal space to make critical investments also in the area of health. Such an act of solidarity would help ensure healthy lives and well-being for all, at all ages.
In conclusion, the Holy See reaffirms that the promotion of health and well-being must always begin with a firm commitment to the inherent dignity of every person, at every stage of life, from conception to natural death. By upholding this principle, by promoting the role of the family, and by striving for economic justice, the wellbeing of all can be guaranteed.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
[1] WHO and others, Trends in Maternal Mortality 2000 to 2020: Estimates by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group and UNDESA/Population Division, 2023.
[2] Pope Francis, Spes non confundit, 2024, 16.
