Mother Teresa sent a special message to the Habitat II delegates, who met in Istanbul to discuss housing and sustainable development.
Dear Friends,
Jesus came to bring us peace of heart, which comes from loving, doing good to others. Abortion and partial-birth abortion are the killers of peace in the world, the greatest destroyers of peace, for if a mother can destroy her child, what is left but for us to kill each other. Love starts at home and lasts at home. By abortion and partial-birth abortion, the mother destroys the home and does not learn to love. And by abortion and partial-birth abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take the responsibility for the child he has brought into the world. So, abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion or partial-birth abortion is not teaching its people to love but to do violence to get what they want. The next step is assisted suicide for the elderly, seriously ill and the unwanted person.
The shut-in, the unwanted, the unborn, the partially born, the unloved, the alcoholics, the dying destitutes, the abandoned and the lonely –all those who are a burden to the human society –they look to us for comfort. If we turn our back on them, we turn our back on God. Therefore, I appeal to everyone of you –rich and poor, old and young, people of all nations, races and religions –to give your hands to serve God in His poor and you hearts to love Him in them. Since love begins at home, maybe Jesus is naked, hungry, sick or homeless in your own heart, in your family, in your neighbours, in the country you live in, in the world.
On June 4 the US Senate Committee for Foreign Relations held hearings on the costs, goals and policies promoted by U.S. delegations at UN World Conferences. Senator Jesse Helms wants to find out just how much money the US is spending on these conferences.
Congressman Chris Smith reported that a Government Accounting Office study estimated that the US spent a total of $5.9 million on the Beijing Conference alone. Smith said that “there is only one achievement of any of these conferences to have been both clearly important and clearly good… “That human rights are universal.” But he added “the international bureaucracies that dominate these conferences proceeded to ignore the most important corollary of the principle that human rights are universal: that it is necessary to be extremely careful about just what it is one call a ‘human right.’”
He said that “the most shocking example of this effort to use the language of human rights to advance a narrow partisan agenda was the effort to create an international right to abortion.”
