Church rises above politics at racism summit

BY LUKE COPPEN
As A ROW over the State of Israel threatened to derail a major international conference on racism this week, the Holy See appealed for "a new and significant step" in the global fight against racial discrimination.
Speaking on the day that the United States and Israel walked out of the United Nations' summit, Vatican Archbishop Diartnuid Martin urged delegates to put aside national differences and lay "the ethical foundations of a new world community".
"This conference must be about truth: the truth concerning human dignity, the truth concerning the fundamental unity of the human family," the archbishop. who was representing Pope John Paul II, told delegates to the UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa.
The Americans and Israelis abandoned the conference on Monday. saying that it had become a "cesspool of racism", with some countries pressing for the final text to equate Zionism with racism. Speaking before the walk-out, Archbishop Martin said that the Holy See was willing to help other countries to find an appropriate way of "referring to the sufferings of the Palestinian people, in keeping with the spirit of the conference".
Addressing the conference's other major fault line — the issue of reparation for the slave trade — the archbishop said the Church could show the world how to heal the wounds of the past.
He said: "The gestures carried out by the Holy Father during the Jubilee might point to a way of reconciliation: to acknowledge past faults in order to establish new relations of equality and peace."
The British Government clashed with African states after it refused to describe the slave trade as a "crime against humanity" fearing huge compensation claims.
In his intervention on Monday, Archbishop Martin called for the conference to address the more practical and pressing issue of discrimination against refugees. Migration, he said, "generates prosperity, helps reduce global inequalities and enhances encounters among people and cultures".
"But today the migrant, especially ones who come from a different cultural background, can easily become the object of racial
discrimination, of intolerance, of exploitation and of violence." Last Friday, the Vatican warned that new genetic technologies could lead to a "new form of racism". In a revised version of its 1988 document, The Church in the Face of Racism: For a More Frater• no! Society, it warned that the world was witnessing a return of the "eugenic temptation", which it said could lead to "a terrible new form of slavery".
"Governments and scientific communities will have to pay much attention in this area," it said.
The document, prepared by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said that racism had increased all over the world in the past decade.
"In regard to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and behaviour linked to intolerance, sadly, since 1988 until today, the situation has not improved," it said. "What is more, it has worsened, as the movement of peoples has continued to increase, to the point that the conflict between cultures, and the multi-ethnic character of the population, have become a real social problem."
Last week. Pope John Paul II said the world was witnessing a "worring resurgence" of racism. Condeming the upsurge in the strongest possible terms, he said that racism was a "sin that constitutes a serious offence against God".