From Ireland to the UNO” “

“From now on wars will be increasingly fought with bacteriological weapons and with grave environmental consequence. They won’t be limited just to our planet, either, but have already spread into the cosmos, seeing that space is full of spy satellites and space shields”. This alarming situation was denounced by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin , permanent observer of the Holy See at the office of the United Nations and specialized institutions in Geneva, in his address to the 5th Consultation of the European Episcopal Conferences (CCEE) on responsibility for the creation, held in recent days at Wroclaw (Poland). Msgr. Martin is due shortly to be installed as auxiliary bishop in Dublin, his hometown. We interviewed him. You’ll be returning to your home diocese as a pastor. How will you find Ireland? “I’ve been away from Dublin for 30 years now. So I’ll first have to get to know the clergy and the new problems of Ireland. I left my country with a situation of unemployment that had risen to 17%. But it is now accepting large numbers of immigrants. There’s economic prosperity but also new problems. The peace process is continuing with great support from the population, even though difficulties are still being encountered at the political level. The will expressed by the population in the two referendums in the north and south of the country was very important: people want the peace process to continue and all the Churches are giving their support. Patience, courage and tenacity are needed if the process is to succeed”. Unfortunately Ireland is only too familiar with terrorism… “Terrorism is a dead end. If I think of the process in northern Ireland, there was a long period of terrorism and tension, but things began to change when some politicians decided to pursue a political solution, to place themselves at the service of the population and to have the great courage to enter into dialogue with the opposite side, assisted and supported by the Church. We need to tackle directly the major problems present in our society and not leave the way open to terrorists. Choosing the way of peace requires greater courage and farsightedness than other solutions. Politics must be pursued not for partisan convenience or personal success but as a service to the population. In no country – as Iraq also teaches us – can a political solution be telecommanded or imposed from abroad. A group of individuals who responsibly assume the guidance of the destiny of a population is the only solution. And the Church must help in forming a new generation of politicians. What is the role of Europe in the international situation today? “A viable alliance between the USA and Europe is important because we have many things in common in our traditions of freedom and democracy; to weaken them would be in no one’s interest. It’s a partnership necessary for the future”. The greatest threat today are bacteriological weapons… “The fact that the nature of war could change is worrying. The international conventions we now have at our disposal to verify the existence or use of bacteriological weapons are insufficiently strong. New situations in the field of armaments have resulted in us taking our problems even into space and that is a very dangerous signal. We need to proceed with the disarmament process, but in many countries the political will is lacking to achieve a viable dialogue on disarmament. Moreover, the instruments at our disposal are no longer adequate; they worked in the period of the cold war, but no longer. We run the risk of a disintegration of the structures we have at our disposal, without any alternative”. Aids, then the Ebola virus, now Sars. What’s behind these epidemics? “Clearly an epidemiological war is a possibility, but I don’t think that’s the case with Sars. In the West we fell into the trap of believing we could respond to any kind of disease with drugs, whereas many diseases require changes in lifestyle and public health measures”.