Cardinal Parolin calls on international community to address terrorism
September 25, 2014
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, called upon the international community to address terrorism and its root causes.
“Nations must come together in order to fulfill our primary responsibility to protect people threatened by violence and direct assaults on their human dignity,” he told the UN Security Council.
Quoting Pope St. John Paul II, he said that “the right to defend countries and peoples from acts of terrorism does not provide license to meet violence with violence, but rather ‘must be exercised with respect for moral and legal limits in the choice of ends and means. The guilty must be correctly identified, since criminal culpability is always personal and cannot be extended to the nation, ethnic group or religion to which the terrorists may belong.’”
Cardinal Parolin added:
International cooperation must also address the root causes upon which international terrorism feeds. In fact, the present terroristic challenge has a strong socio-cultural component. Young people travelling abroad to join the ranks of terrorist organizations often come from poor immigrant families, disillusioned by what they feel as a situation of exclusion and by the lack of integration and values in certain societies. Together with the legal tools and resources to prevent citizens from becoming foreign terrorist fighters, Governments should engage with civil society to address the problems of communities most at risk of radicalization and recruitment and to achieve their satisfactory social integration.
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Posted by: Leopardi -
Sep. 26, 2014 10:00 AM ET USA
So, once again, that terrorism exists, preys on us and threatens our way of life, as well as our religious freedom is our fault! That's worse than nonesense; it's the cry of the perpetual victim and the formula for our own defeat.
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Posted by: bernie4871 -
Sep. 25, 2014 9:04 PM ET USA
Thank you jg. Right to the point. "Nonsense".
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Posted by: jg23753479 -
Sep. 25, 2014 8:10 AM ET USA
"Young people...[joining]...terrorist organizations often come from poor immigrant families, disillusioned by... exclusion and by the lack of integration...in certain societies." Nonsense! Just one example among many: The chief media expert in ISIS is from Boston, the son of a prominent Boston cardiologist, and trained in the area's finest schools. The Vatican is sorely ill-informed about the true nature of Islamic terrorism if this speech is any indication and is spreading the misinformation.
