{"id":14656,"date":"2015-09-25T09:51:14","date_gmt":"2015-09-25T13:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/70\/?p=14656"},"modified":"2015-09-25T09:51:14","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T13:51:14","slug":"welcome-remarks-on-the-visit-of-his-holiness-pope-francis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/70\/2015\/09\/25\/welcome-remarks-on-the-visit-of-his-holiness-pope-francis\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome remarks on the Visit of his Holiness Pope Francis"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Welcome remarks on the Visit of his Holiness Pope Francis\u00a0by the President of the 70<sup>th<\/sup> session of the UN General Assembly, Mr. Mogens Lykketoft<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>25 September 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Your Holiness, \u00a0Heads of State and Governments, Mr. Secretary General, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentleman.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">It is my great honor to welcome you, Pope Francis, Bishop of Rome, to the General Assembly of the United Nations \u2013 as head of the Roman Catholic Church, and as a defender of the dignity of humanity and the life-support systems of our planet.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">When you recalled previously how inseparable the \u2018<em>bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and peace\u2019, <\/em>you spoke directly to the three pillars of the United Nations\u00a0 &#8211; and to the interdependency and interconnectedness between these three pillars.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">That is the message at the heart of the new and very ambitious 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development . Here we confront the injustices of poverty, marginalization and discrimination. We recognize the need to reduce inequalities and to protect our common home by changing unsustainable patterns of consumption and production.\u00a0 And, we identify the overwhelming need to address the politics of division, corruption and irresponsibility that fuel conflict and hold back development.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">As Your Holiness has stated, we are indeed, <em>\u201cunited by the same concern<\/em>\u201d.\u00a0 In two months\u2019 time, at the Climate Conference in Paris, that unity will be tested. We can, and we must, find the wisdom and courage to adopt an ambitious [legally binding] climate agreement to protect \u00a0people and planet.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Similar urgency and unity is required to bring an end to the conflicts and violent extremism affecting many parts of our world today. To date, our collective response to these crisis, and to the plight of millions of displaced people and refugees has been, at best, inadequate, and, at worst, a failure of our humanity.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The need for this great hall to address these crisis with leadership and action,\u00a0 in the spirit of solidarity, dialogue and\u00a0 tolerance, cannot be overstated.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Therefore we have been looking forward so much to listening to Your Holiness\u2019 address to the General Assembly of the United Nations.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">I welcome you once again.<\/p>\n<div class=\"woo-sc-divider\"><\/div>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome remarks on the Visit of his Holiness Pope Francis\u00a0by the President of the 70th session of the UN General Assembly, Mr. Mogens Lykketoft 25 September 2015 \u00a0 Your Holiness, \u00a0Heads of State and Governments, Mr. Secretary General, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentleman. It is my great honor to welcome you, Pope Francis, Bishop of Rome, [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":14801,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[411,294,282],"class_list":["post-14656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-statements","tag-pope-francis","tag-sdgs","tag-speech"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Welcome remarks on the Visit of his Holiness Pope Francis - General Assembly of the United Nations<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/70\/2015\/09\/25\/welcome-remarks-on-the-visit-of-his-holiness-pope-francis\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Welcome remarks on the Visit of his Holiness Pope Francis - General Assembly of the United Nations\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Welcome remarks on the Visit of his Holiness Pope Francis\u00a0by the President of the 70th session of the UN General Assembly, Mr. Mogens Lykketoft 25 September 2015 \u00a0 Your Holiness, \u00a0Heads of State and Governments, Mr. Secretary General, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentleman. It is my great honor to welcome you, Pope Francis, Bishop of Rome, [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/70\/2015\/09\/25\/welcome-remarks-on-the-visit-of-his-holiness-pope-francis\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"General Assembly of the United Nations\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-09-25T13:51:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2015\/09\/UNSustainableDevelopmentGoals_Brand-02.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"990\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"771\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Katharina Kandt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Katharina Kandt\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/70\/2015\/09\/25\/welcome-remarks-on-the-visit-of-his-holiness-pope-francis\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/70\/2015\/09\/25\/welcome-remarks-on-the-visit-of-his-holiness-pope-francis\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Katharina Kandt\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/70\/#\/schema\/person\/06bf09e43d46846c087701ec99ac8412\"},\"headline\":\"Welcome remarks on the Visit of his Holiness Pope Francis\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-09-25T13:51:14+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/70\/2015\/09\/25\/welcome-remarks-on-the-visit-of-his-holiness-pope-francis\/\"},\"wordCount\":367,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/70\/2015\/09\/25\/welcome-remarks-on-the-visit-of-his-holiness-pope-francis\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2015\/09\/UNSustainableDevelopmentGoals_Brand-02.png\",\"keywords\":[\"pope Francis\",\"SDGs\",\"speech\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Statements\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/70\/2015\/09\/25\/welcome-remarks-on-the-visit-of-his-holiness-pope-francis\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/pga\/70\/2015\/09\/25\/welcome-remarks-on-the-visit-of-his-holiness-pope-francis\/\",\"name\":\"Welcome remarks on the Visit of his Holiness Pope Francis - 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