Universal health care a ‘moral imperative,’ Vatican’s top diplomat tells UN
Cardinal Pietro Parolin told a U.N. meeting on pandemic preparedness that universal health care is a moral imperative. Parolin said poverty, inadequate living conditions and lack of health care increase the risks of severe illness and death, and can hinder future pandemic responses. He invoked Catholic social teaching on human dignity and solidarity, emphasizing the need for equitable access to medical advances and essential health services.
1 day ago
Cardinal Pietro Parolin told a U.N. meeting that universal health care is a “moral imperative,” linking access to care with human dignity, pandemic preparedness, and the need to address poverty and unsafe living conditions. He also highlighted the pandemic’s social and mental-health effects, while a proposed U.N. declaration on pandemic response faced opposition from the United States and Italy.
Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, made his remarks in a statement for the U.N.’s Sept. 25 High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, held during the organization’s 81st General Assembly. The meeting was the second of its kind; the first took place in 2023 to assess the global response to COVID-19.
Citing Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, Parolin said that medical, scientific, and technological advances remain inaccessible to many people, as the pandemic had shown. He warned that failing to address this gap could make future pandemics harder to prevent and manage.
He called for attention to conditions that raise the risk of severe illness and death, including poverty, poor living conditions, and lack of health care. The article reports U.N. and World Bank figures indicating that more than 826 million people live in poverty, including about 811 million living on less than $3 a day.
The U.N. meeting focused on a “multilateral and intergenerational approach,” grounded in equity and solidarity. Parolin said universal health care reflects the Church’s teaching on the equal dignity and rights of all people.
The article cites U.N. estimates that as many as 3.4 billion people lack secure, safe, and adequate housing. It also reports that an estimated 4.6 billion lack access to essential health services, according to a 2025 monitoring report by the World Health Organization and World Bank Group.
Parolin said solidarity should include building research, innovation, manufacturing, production, and regulatory expertise in developing countries. Those themes appeared in a draft political declaration prepared for consideration by the U.N. General Assembly.
The United States and Italy were among the countries opposing adoption of the proposed nonbinding declaration. The agreement could be reconsidered at a later point.
Parolin said COVID-19 had both revealed and worsened social fragmentation. He pointed to older people being abandoned and young people experiencing isolation and loneliness that hindered their personal and emotional development.
He also invoked Pope Leo’s call for greater attention to mental-health needs, particularly among young people, and quoted the pope’s message that people should be reminded that their lives have value and that they are loved and called to a purpose.
Universal healthcare as an expression of human dignity and solidarity
Universal access to healthcare is a concrete expression of human dignity and solidarity: illness does not diminish a person’s worth, and care should not depend solely on wealth or social standing. Catholic teaching therefore supports ensuring effective access to adequate, affordable care, especially for people who are poor or otherwise vulnerable. The Church’s principles do not, by themselves, prescribe one particular financing or delivery system; they provide moral criteria by which health policies should be judged.
Human dignity is inherent, not earned through good health, independence, or personal choices. John Paul II teaches that society’s duty to protect and treat health excludes no one—even someone responsible for damaging their own health—because the person’s dignity remains greater than any erroneous or sinful conduct. Caring for health is thus a responsibility of both individuals and society.
The US bishops describe affordable and accessible healthcare as both a safeguard of human life and a fundamental human right. They say a health system should respect dignity and life, protect conscience, and meet the needs of the poor and uninsured, including children, pregnant women, immigrants, and others in vulnerable circumstances.
This means healthcare cannot be treated merely as a consumer good allocated according to purchasing power. Benedict XVI calls for distributive justice: adequate care should be made available to all according to objective need. He warns against a system marked by abundant consumption for some while others cannot obtain basic care or essential medicines.
Solidarity is more than sympathy. It recognizes that people are interdependent and calls those with greater resources to take responsibility for those who are weaker, while respecting everyone’s legitimate rights and contribution to the common good.
In healthcare, this principle requires attention to the obstacles that make care unreachable: poverty, hunger, inadequate housing, unsafe work, and unaffordable costs. The Holy See has stressed that universal coverage must include quality, affordable care for the poorest and those in rural areas, and should be connected with wider efforts such as social protection, education, and decent work.
Solidarity also challenges a purely commercial view of medicine. The sick person is not simply a client whose value is measured by ability to pay; care should accompany the whole person and give particular attention to people who are poor, unborn, disabled, elderly, or otherwise at risk of being neglected.
Catholic teaching supports the goal of universal access, but it also insists that the means and services offered must respect human life and moral conscience. The US bishops specifically call for systems that allow employers and individuals to act without compromising religious or moral convictions.
A sound Catholic assessment therefore asks whether a policy:
Universal healthcare, understood in this moral sense, is not merely an administrative arrangement. It is a public commitment that no one should be abandoned when sick, and that society’s institutions should embody the equal dignity and mutual responsibility of the human family.