The Vatican’s top diplomat to the United Nations has told a UN conference that hate speech “contradicts the commandment to love one’s neighbour”. Source: OSV News.
Archbishop Christophe el-Kassis, apostolic nuncio and the Holy See’s permanent observer to the UN, shared his thoughts in a statement during the “Global Conference on Promoting Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue and Tolerance in Countering Hate Speech” on September 17.
The conference, which took place at the UN’s New York headquarters, was sponsored by the UN’s Alliance of Civilisations, created in 2005 to address social and cultural polarisation.
In his address – which came one day after three Vatican dicasteries released a new note on the importance of interreligious and ecumenical dialogue – Archbishop el-Kassis said hate speech “poisons public discourse, inflames division, and too often prepares the ground for violence and persecution”.
Such damage is inflicted regardless of whether hate speech is “directed against individuals or communities on the basis of their religion, ethnicity, nationality, or any other characteristic,” he said.
While “freedom of expression is a fundamental right that must be protected,” the archbishop said, “this freedom carries corresponding responsibilities”.
“Speech that deliberately incites hatred or violence cannot claim the protection of liberty,” he said, since “it erodes the very conditions in which genuine freedom can flourish”.
The Holy See “reaffirms that every human person is created in the image and likeness of God and possesses an inviolable dignity that no ideology, ideology of hatred, or expression of contempt may diminish”, the archbishop stressed.
Archbishop el-Kassis said that “foundational truth” creates “the moral imperative to reject every form of intolerance, discrimination, and hate speech that wounds the human family and undermines the conditions for peaceful coexistence”.
He quoted Pope Leo XIV’s May 2025, address to media representatives, during which the Pope said, “Let us disarm words and we will help to disarm the world.”
Archbishop el-Kassis also noted that “peace cannot be woven by words alone”.
He clarified that “true tolerance is not indifference or relativism,” but rather “the active recognition of the equal dignity of every person and the freedom of conscience that belongs to each”.
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Hate speech violates command to love one’s neighbour, says Vatican’s UN diplomat (By Gina Christian, OSV News)
