Caritas head calls U.N. summit 'missed opportunity'

Published: 2005-09-19

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The failure of a recent U.N. summit to take concrete action against poverty represented a "missed opportunity of staggering proportions," said the head of the worldwide Catholic charities organization, Caritas Internationalis. "The hope for achievements targeted for 2015 was daunting, but politically perfectly possible in a world with the wealth and the technology to dent dehumanizing poverty," Duncan MacLaren, Caritas secretary-general, said in a Sept. 15 statement. The intended focus of the Sept. 14-16 U.N. World Summit in New York had been to review the Millennium Development Goals on alleviating poverty and investing in health, education and the environment in the poorest countries of the world. While the final document from the U.N. summit recommitted to the goal of cutting poverty in half by 2015 and addressed issues on U.N. reform, terrorism, human rights and peace-building, some critics said the document failed to fully address rich nations' previous commitments to fight world poverty.

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