Cardinal Parolin pays tribute to Helsinki Accords
November 24, 2015
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, paid tribute to the Helsinki Accords four decades after they were signed.
Signatories, including the United States, the Holy See, and most of the free and Communist nations of Europe, agreed to accept the territorial boundaries then in place and to respect human rights, including religious freedom.
The Helsinki model is “still valid, even in moments of great tension for the international scenario,” Cardinal Parolin wrote in the November 23-24 edition of L’Osservatore Romano, “because it tends to leave to individual states a restricted margin of autonomy.”
The idea of fraternity, Cardinal Parolin added, helps nations to move beyond narrow self-interest and to heed the cry found in the Book of Genesis: “Where is your brother? What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”
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