July 14, 1976
His Excellency Kurt Waldheim
Secretary General United Nations New York, N.Y.
Your Excellency:
On behalf of the Ukrainian Catholics organized in our Society, we appeal to the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations and respectfully request Your Excellency to forward this appeal to the proper agencies of that Commission.
Our appeal concerns the violation of human rights of the Patriarch of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, His Beatitude Josyf Cardinal Slipyj, who is currently detained by the Vatican authorities.
We base our appeal on articles 9 and 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted and proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948. The Papal interdict of June 17, prohibiting His Beatitude to leave Rome and attend the 41 Eucharist Congress in Philadelphia, Pa., clearly falls under the said articles. In addition, the very human rights of thousands of Ukrainians are violated. They have the right to see their Patriarch at this solemn Christian occasion, and they should not be deprived of that right.
We hope that the U.N. Commission on Human Rights will consider our appeal favorably, and intervene on the behalf of the Ukrainian people with the Vatican authorities. The awesome power of Your Excellency’s office and that of the Commission on Human Rights will be able to perform a great service to that segment of humanity which has no other recourse than to that Agency, which must be the guardian of all human rights.
To extend a helping hand to those who suffer privation of human rights in the Free World, would indeed be a matter of elementary humanity.
Respectfully yours,
Myroslaw Nawrockyj, M.D. President
Leonid Rudnytzky, Ph.D. Secretary
