Seminar organized by the Permanent Representation of the Holy See to the Council of Europe and the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), in Strasbourg, on October 14th, 2017.

Can Catholic social thought contribute to human rights understanding? How does the Catholic Church evaluate the present challenges to the protection and promotion of human rights? What are the priorities of the Holy See in the human rights field? Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi will discuss these topics with the participants to the Seminary. Archbishop Tomasi is widely recognized as one of the most prominent interpreters of the Catholic thought on human rights, his career includes the longest ever tenure of a Holy See’s Envoy to the United Nations in Geneva (2003-2016).

Read here the intervention (text non reviewed by the author).

Born in Casoni di Mussolente (Italy) in 1940, he joined in his youth the Missionaries of Saint Charles (Scalabrinians) and in 1965 was ordained a priest in New York, city where he studied theology, earned a Ph.D. (Fordham University) and co-founded the “Center for Migration Studies”. Pope St John Paul II named him Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants (1989-1996) and then Apostolic Nuncio in Etiopia and Eritrea (1999-2003) and finally, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nation’s Institutions in Geneva (2003 – 2016). After his retirement, Pope Francis asked him to assist Cardinal Peter K. A. Turkson in the creation of the new Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.