Vatican Diplomats Remember U.N. Envoy

By CINDY WOODEN, CNS

Published: September 4, 2003

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Mourning the death of the U.N. envoy in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, Vatican diplomats remembered him as a highly efficient champion of people whose rights were being trampled.

The 55-year-old U.N. envoy was killed Aug. 19 when a truck carrying explosives was driven into the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad.

“He was very active and extraordinarily well-liked,” said Coadjutor Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, Ireland, the former Vatican representative to U.N. organizations in Geneva.

In June, de Mello took a leave from his post as the Geneva-based U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to head the U.N. mission in post-war Iraq.

“What struck me was the story of his death,” Archbishop Martin said in an Aug. 20 telephone interview from Dublin. “He spent most of his life working to protect victims of violence, and it appears he died alone in his office without protection.”

The archbishop described the U.N. envoy as “an imposing figure” who did not mince words, yet at the same time was very personable.

Archbishop Martin said the possible motives for the attack on the U.N. building “are very hard for normal people to fathom. He was the senior non-American there and was seen as the guarantor of legality.”

De Mello, he said, “represented what is best in international public service. He was efficient, hard-working, dedicated, an idealist, yet realistic.”

Archbishop Martin said the international community has an obligation to de Mello to continue the U.N.’s work to provide the Iraqi people with stability, material assistance and help in rebuilding their country as well as to protect U.N. and other aid workers in Iraq.

The Irish archbishop said he and the Brazilian diplomat would chat after meetings and receptions -- in Italian. The archbishop worked at the Vatican for years, and de Mello attended high school in Rome when his father, also a diplomat, was stationed in the city.

Archbishop Martin said that while many Catholic charitable organizations, particularly those working with refugees, had contacts with de Mello his closest work with Catholics probably occurred in 1999-2002 when he was head of the U.N. mission overseeing East Timor’s transition to independence.

“He had a lot of contact with the church and good contacts with the bishops of East Timor,” the archbishop said.

Archbishop Renato Martino, the former Vatican observer at the United Nations in New York, told Vatican Radio he knew the diplomat well.

“I was devastated when I heard what happened,” the archbishop said Aug. 20. “He was like a brother to me.”

Archbishop Martino said de Mello “was very kind to everyone” and got the best out of his collaborators.

Oto Agripino Maia, Brazil’s ambassador to the Vatican, told Vatican Radio, “Sergio was an untiring fighter for peace and was a great Brazilian.

“He died in the defense of the values of peace and international law,” he said.

The “horrific bombing” of the U.N. headquarters in Iraq deprived the world of two leading advocates for refugee services, said the head of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Migration.

Coadjutor Bishop Thomas G. Wenski of Orlando, Fla., said the bombing “should be condemned as an attack against not only the United Nations but the Iraqi people.”

He spoke of the loss of de Mello and Arthur Helton, a U.S. lawyer specializing in immigration and refugee issues, who was in the building to visit de Mello.

Both were experienced in providing refugee services and in defending human rights, said Bishop Wenski in a statement released Aug. 21 at the U.S. bishops’ conference headquarters in Washington.

“Those who flee war and persecution also lost a friend and advocate” in Helton, he said.

Helton “dedicated his life to the protection of the victims of war, first as director of the Refugee Project at the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights and most recently as a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City,” said Bishop Wenski.

“His commitment and dedication to the defense of basic human rights is to be emulated and the impact of his work will be felt for many years to come,” he said.

The bishop said de Mello “worked tirelessly to bring peace to war-torn nations and to end the suffering of peoples affected by war, especially refugees” in Southeast Asia.

The U.N. envoy’s death “is a tragic loss,” said Bishop Wenski.

Bishop Wenski offered his prayers to the families and friends of the two men.

“I also pray for all the victims of this senseless act and for Americans and Iraqis who have lost their lives in this conflict,” the bishop said.