Universal health care is “a moral imperative,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin told the United Nations, presenting access to medical services as essential to human dignity and effective pandemic preparedness. The Vatican secretary of state said this position is one that “the Holy See has consistently reiterated.”

Cardinal Parolin offered the assessment in a statement delivered during the U.N.’s Sept. 25 High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response. The gathering took place at the organization’s New York headquarters during its 81st General Assembly.

High level events connected with the General Assembly were held from Sept. 18 through Sept. 28. The Sept. 25 pandemic meeting was the second gathering of its kind, following an initial meeting in 2023 that assessed global responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the U.N., the 2026 meeting focused on developing a “multilateral and intergenerational approach” to preventing and addressing pandemics and public health emergencies. The organization said that approach rests on the “principles of equity and solidarity.”

Cardinal Parolin cited Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” while addressing disparities in access to scientific and medical progress. In the encyclical, the pope said such advances “are not easily accessible to the vast majority of people, as was dramatically demonstrated during the recent pandemic.”

The cardinal warned that leaving those disparities unresolved would weaken future efforts to contain major health threats. “Failing to confront this gap will make it harder to prevent and respond to pandemics effectively in the future,” he said.

Pandemic readiness, Cardinal Parolin argued, must begin with conditions that leave people especially vulnerable to severe disease. He called for action addressing “the circumstances which often increase the risk of severe illness and death: poverty, poor living conditions, and lack of healthcare.”

The scale of those conditions is immense, according to figures cited from international organizations. About 1 in 10 people worldwide, representing more than 826 million people, live in poverty, while some 811 million survive on less than $3 per day, according to U.N. and World Bank statistics.

Housing insecurity presents another sweeping challenge. The U.N.’s 2026 “World Cities Report” estimates that as many as 3.4 billion people lack “secure, safe, and adequate housing.”

Access to health care is similarly limited for billions of people. An estimated 4.6 billion people lack access to essential health services, according to the 2025 UHC Global Monitoring Report produced jointly by the World Health Organization and the World Bank Group.

Cardinal Parolin connected universal health care with the Catholic Church’s recognition of the “equality of all in dignity and rights.” He said that understanding, made clear through Catholic social teaching, is where the commitment to universal care is “rooted.”

The cardinal also emphasized “our increasing interdependence and interconnectedness” when discussing global health preparation. Solidarity, he said, “implies building expertise and capacity in research, innovation, manufacturing, production, and regulation in developing countries.”

Those priorities appeared in the draft political declaration produced by the Sept. 25 meeting for consideration by the U.N. General Assembly. The U.S. and Italy were among the countries that opposed adopting the nonbinding agreement, which may be considered again later.

Cardinal Parolin also turned to the human and social damage exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. He highlighted the “social fragmentation” that the pandemic both revealed and made worse.

“At times,” he said, “older persons were abandoned and many young people suffered from isolation and loneliness, inhibiting their personal and affective development.” His statement presented those experiences as part of the broader challenge that future public health planning must confront.

The cardinal drew on Pope Leo’s May address to an international conference focused on education and mental health. He repeated the pope’s call for “greater attention” to mental health needs, particularly those of young people.

Quoting Pope Leo, Cardinal Parolin emphasized the need to remind people that “life has value, that each of us is loved, awaited and called to a task in the world.” The appeal placed mental health, human dignity and equitable medical access at the center of the Vatican’s message on pandemic preparedness.