Pope tells UN pandemic is opportunity for change

Pope Francis has urged world leaders to use the coronavirus emergency as an opportunity to reform the injustices of the global economy and "perverse logic" of the nuclear deterrence doctrine, saying increased isolationist responses to the world's problems "must not prevail." Francis laid out his appeal for greater involvement and influence of the United Nations in protecting the poor, migrants and the environment in a videotaped speech Friday to the United Nations General Assembly, held mostly virtually this year because of the pandemic

Francis said the world has a choice to make as it tries to emerge from the COVID-19 crisis and address the grave economic impact it has had on the planet's most vulnerable: greater solidarity and multilateralism, or a self-retreat into greater "individualism and elitism." He said: "We never emerge from a crisis just as we were. We come out either better or worse. This is why, at this critical juncture, it is our duty to rethink the future of our common home and our common project." Francis is expected to lay out further his vision for the need for solidarity in the post-COVID world in an encyclical to be released October 4.