VATICAN - The religious mission of the Church includes defending and promoting fundamental human rights: Cardinal Martino affirms at International Conference on “Women and Human Rights”.

Rome (Fides Service) - Cultures based on efficiency, practical materialism, utilitarian and hedonist egoism threaten the entire human rights system. Unless our point of reference is the integral vision of man and woman, created by God and redeemed by Christ, juridical tutelage of rights is radically shaken and emptied of its contents. This was affirmed by the President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Renato Martino, when he addressed the International Conference organised by the Regina Apostolorum Institute on the theme “Women and Human Rights”.
Speaking at the academic see of the Legionaries of Christ in Rome on: “Human Rights in the Magisterium”, among other things the Cardinal said “ partial recognition of human rights which leads to an inadequate concept of mankind, endangers the destiny of contemporary democracies. Respect for the integral truth of mankind becomes, therefore, a moral imperative for the democratic culture of our day in which there is a widespread opinion that the juridical order of a society should limit itself to registering and acknowledging the convictions of the majority”.
“Moving from the consideration of common dignity, which surpasses all differences and makes all human persons brothers and sisters, members of one family-Cardinal Martino said - the Magisterium stigmatises all forms of discrimination perpetrated in the name of race, ethnicity, gender, social condition or religion. Equal dignity of all persons demands that there be no discrimination in fundamental rights, in any ambit, whether in the social field or at the cultural level; it demands that we reach a more human and more just condition of life eliminating the too many disparities and inequalities which exist among individual members and peoples of the one human family”.
Referring to the specific theme of the Conference, the President of Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace underlined that the contribution offered by the Magisterium of the Church in the field of human rights has particularly valorised feminine specificity, diverse from male specificity, in equality of dignity which is enriching and is indispensable for harmonious co-existence. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 18/3/2004 - Righe 26; Parole 333)