Pope John Paul II addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations in October 1979, at the invitation of the organisation's Secretary-General. A full text of his address is at the Vatican website: here. Audio of his address is at the United Nations audiovisual library, in two parts: part 1 and part 2. The language of delivery was English; the spoken form was shortened, but the full original text was published for the members of the United Nations. The observations below are based on the text as published at the Vatican website.
After expressing the historic confidence and support of the Holy See for the work of the United Nations, Pope John Paul II asserts that it is the religious and moral character of the mission of the Church that is the foundation of this confidence:
This confidence and conviction on the part of the Apostolic See is the result, as I have said, not of merely political reasons but of the religious and moral character of the mission of the Roman Catholic Church. As a universal community embracing faithful belonging to almost all countries and continents, nations, peoples, races, languages and cultures, the Church is deeply interested in the existence and activity of the Organization whose very name tells us that it unites and associates nations and States. It unites and associates: it does not divide and oppose. It seeks out the ways for understanding and peaceful collaboration, and endeavours with the means at its disposal and the methods in its power to exclude war, division and mutual destruction within the great family of humanity today.
There are two key points that can be identified in the body of Pope John Paul's address. The first is what the Pope sees as the absolutely foundational standing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the mission of the United Nations, where, in his words, it is "placed as the basic inspiration and cornerstone of the United Nations Organisation":
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights—with its train of many declarations and conventions on highly important aspects of human rights, in favour of children, of women, of equality between races, and especially the two international covenants on economic, social and cultural rights and on civil and political rights—must remain the basic value in the United Nations Organization with which the consciences of its members must be confronted and from which they must draw continual inspiration.
Pope John Paul takes this Declaration as the reference point for all his remarks, including when he takes up the theme of Paul VI in advocating for peace in the world and in his discussion of some specific contemporary situations.
The second point is the insistence that the specific rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration are all directed towards the dignity of the human person. Referring to the Declaration, Pope John Paul says:
The governments and States of the world have understood that, if they are not to attack and destroy each other, they must unite. The real way, the fundamental way to this is through each human being, through the definition and recognition of and respect for the inalienable rights of individuals and of the communities of peoples....
These rights concern the satisfaction of man's essential needs, the exercise of his freedoms, and his relationship with others; but always and everywhere they concern man, they concern man's full human dimension.
A large section of the Pope's address looks at threats to rights that refer to the material dimensions of the human person and then to threats that refer to the spiritual dimension of the person.
If then we are looking for principles that seek to define why the Holy See maintains an interest in the work of the United Nations Organisation, Pope John Paul offers two: a foundational role for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the orientation of the rights contained in that Declaration towards both the material and spiritual dignity of the human person.
[As an incidental comment: the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enjoins on member states of the United Nations to promote the rights contained in the Declaration and "by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance". Legal provisions, therefore, are intended to protect human rights, and not to in some way confer such rights, rights which already exist from the dignity of every human person. In a time characterised by the language of "equalities" rather than of "human rights", where legal provisions are perceived as conferring new rights, Pope John Paul's anchoring of the engagement of the Holy See with the United Nations in the foundational role of the Universal Declaration is of significance.]
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