The Evangelical Pope | One Great Family

Each week we let Saint Pope John Paul II share meaningful signposts to spark socio-economic resolves through justice and righteousness combined with mercy and compassion; in short, love.

               28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one …

               __ Galatians 3:28 (New International Version)

United Nations Headquarters (New York), Thursday, 5 October 1995 | Today, the problem of nationalities form part of a new world horizon marked by massive "mobility," which has blurred the ethnic and cultural frontiers of the different peoples due to various processes such as migrations, mass media, and the globalization of the economy.

And yet, precisely against this horizon of universality, we see the robust re-emergence of a particular ethnic and cultural consciousness, as it were an explosive need for identity and survival, a counterweight to the tendency toward uniformity. This phenomenon must not be underestimated or regarded as a simple leftover of the past. It demands profound interpretation and a closer examination of anthropology, ethics, and law.

This tension between the particular and the universal can be considered inherent in human beings. By sharing in the exact human nature, people automatically feel they are members of one great family, as is the case. But as a result of the concrete historical conditioning of this exact nature, they are necessarily bound in a more intense way to particular human groups, beginning with the family and going on to the various groups to which they belong and up to the whole of their ethnic and cultural group, which is called, not by accident, a "nation," from the Latin word "nasci": "to be born."

This term, enriched with another one, "Patria" (fatherland/motherland), evokes the family's reality. The human condition thus finds itself between these two poles — universality and particularity — with a vital tension between them, an inevitable tension, but singularly in harmony if they are lived in a calm and balanced way.

Excerpted from:

Apostolic Journey Of His Holiness John Paul II To The United States Of America, The Fiftieth General Assembly of the United Nations Organization, ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II, United Nations Headquarters (New York), Thursday, 5 October 1995

https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1995/october/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_05101995_address-to-uno.html