Longtime Papal Nuncio to the UN Passes Away

By | November 15, 2024

Former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with Cardinal Renato Martino in 2011.

WASHINGTON D.C., November 15 (C-Fam) Cardinal Renato Martino passed away on October 28. He was the Apostolic Nuncio of the Holy See to the United Nations from 1986 to 2002 and a true hero of the international pro-life movement.

Cardinal Martino held the line against efforts to establish a global right to abortion and to redefine the family at the United Nations as the representative of Pope St. John Paul the Great. He led several successful campaigns to block abortion rights, gender ideology, and the re-definition of the family. The way these issues are addressed in UN policy today still reflects the work of Martino and his team.

Martino helped to frame an enduring UN debate on abortion and gender ideology at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development held at Cairo and the 1995 International Conference on Women held at Beijing.

Most memorably, the sexual left aggressively pushed for a declaration of a global right to abortion. Against all odds and the naysayers within the Church, Martino and his team were able to cobble together a wide coalition of Latin American, Muslim, and African delegations to block this. They were aided by hundreds of civilian volunteers from around the world who rallied to the pro-life and pro-family cause at Pope John Paul the Great’s invitation.

In the end, the left had to settle for coded language about “sexual and reproductive health” in UN policy instead of a declaration of abortion as an international right. At the same conferences, Martino was also able to stave off an open definition of gender and a redefinition of the family in international policy. These stalemates last to this day.

Vatican diplomacy was so effective under Martino that Nordic countries teamed up with dissident Catholics in an unsuccessful attempt to expel the Holy See from the United Nations.

Those of us who saw him work the UN halls in person came to appreciate his courage and intelligence. Martino wasn’t afraid to ruffle a few feathers.

Then head of the UN Population Fund Nafis Sadik, an abortion extremist, often complained to Martino about pro-life organizations at the United Nations. She once complained to him that I was saying the most awful thing about her.  Martino said, “I hardly know the man.” And that was true as far as it went. She replied, “But, your eminence, his group is Catholic.” Martino replied, “So is Catholic for a Free Choice, madam. You cannot have it both ways.” Sadik was happy to have the heretical group Catholics for a Free Choice roaming the halls of the UN, just not faithful groups.

Martino had an amazing team. His chief negotiator on the life and family issues, layman John Klink, cut a wide swath of persuasive diplomacy at the UN. He was fearless in hard negotiations, even over against the Clinton Administration. Klink worked the negotiating rooms building coalitions on common language. But he knew he was backed by Martino and all the way to the Pope. He told me his instructions from the Vatican were simply to “be faithful to the gospel.”

His greatest regret from his time at the UN was undoubtedly the two invasions of Iraq under the Bush family administrations, calling the second invasion a “crime against peace.”

Martino had backing from the highest levels at the Vatican. Pope Saint John Paul the Great often directly gave him tasks, bypassing the bureaucracy of the Vatican State Department. At John Paul’s side was legendary Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls. He also had support from the Pontifical Council for the Family led by Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo who was veritable bulldog on the life and family issues at the UN and in his home country of Colombia.

Longtime pro-life hero Christine Vollmer, whose husband Alberto served as the Venezuelan Ambassador to the Holy See, told the Friday Fax, “Cardinal Martino was an extraordinary servant of the Church and of all right-minded people. His capacity to welcome all those who could contribute their talents to stem the virulent attack on life and family at the UN in the 1990’s was extraordinary. Volunteers from all nations and religions were equally appreciated for the travel and sacrifices they made to assist the Holy See in helping delegates to understand the real meaning of the language used in the documents and change it. Thanks to Cardinal Martino the world began to understand the vicious tendencies inherent in the world meetings of the UN. I consider Martino a hero of Vatican diplomacy under John Paul II.”

Cardinal Martino received C-Fam’s highest award, the Maximillian Kolbe Friend to the Nations Medal.

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