MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS PAUL VI
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SECOND GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE
UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZATION FOR INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT*

As the Second General Conference of the United Nations Organization for Industrial Development opens, we wish to express to you our work in the work of this Assembly. This Conference bears witness to the aspirations of people for a more equitable international order, to their impatience at the delays of its realization, but above all to their faith – sustained in the face of all difficulties – in the possibility of a better world being built by the international community.

It is with all our heart that we express good wishes for the success of these sessions and invoke upon them the blessing of the Almighty. In this year 1975, the Holy Year, we are unceasingly calling Christians to Reconciliation and Renewal. May we exhort the members of this Conference to undertake and continue their dialogue – however difficult it may prove – in a similar spirit, in order that cooperation may overcome confrontation, through the rediscovery of the essential values of human solidarity.

During the past year, serious circumstances have led the United Nations during its most solemn sessions to study key problems of the international order: the problems of raw materials and development, of food and agriculture, and of economic rights and obligations of States. Your Conference is today considering the subject of industrialization. This is an exciting subject for, while "it is a sign of development and contributes to it" (Populorum Progressio, 25), it embraces the most specific achievements of modern civilization. It is also a formidable subject, for it is concretely linked with unsatisfactory situations, with benefits which are inequitably shared, with a sometimes inhuman exploitation of the workers – all of which are realities weighing heavily upon international relations.

Such an examination will call for great clarity of mind, for industrialization runs the risk of promising more than it possesses to those who do not view it as subordinated to the integral aims of an authentic human development. This will also call for each one to consider the more general interests of mankind. A worldwide common good must be developed, to which each nation will be called upon to contribute within the framework of its sovereignty.

We therefore consider it to be especially indicated, Mr. President, that this present Conference for Industrial Development should give proof of a willingness for renewal in the examination of the very concept of industrialization and its place in the hierarchy of values; it should likewise give proof of a spirit of reconciliation, that is to say, a spirit of listening to one another, of solidarity in seeking the common good, of harmonious attachment to the goal which this present Conference, after so many others, is striving for: the happiness of each individual and the happiness of all.

12 March 1975

PAULUS PP. VI

*ORa n.13 p. 4-5;

Paths to Peace p.262-263.