VATICAN (CWNews.com) -- In a meeting with the administrative chiefs of the United Nations, Pope John Paul II stressed that UN decisions should serve the needs of all the world's people, rather than any elite organizations or interest groups.

    Speaking on April 7 to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the administrators of the UN's main agencies, the Holy Father said that the world organization should promote "a generous and ambitious spirit of global solidarity." He argued that the UN has a "unique opportunity" to serve as a "point of encounter" among nations, and to help individual nations and groups recognize their common interests.

    The UN should also be careful to ensure that important decisions are not made exclusively by the leaders of the world's most powerful nations, the Pope continued. He reasoned that interaction and cooperation among the representatives of governments and private organizations could help to "assure that the interests of states and the different groups that compose them-- legitimate as they might be-- are not invoked or defended at the expense of the interests or the rights of other peoples, especially those in the poorest countries." Genuine cooperation among a broad variety of different groups, he concluded, could promote "social harmony" throughout the world.

    The Pope spoke of his "profound concern" about the efforts of some groups to "impose certain ideological views or models of life on the international community." He mentioned that these groups seemed particularly active in efforts to change international policies regarding the defense of human life and the family. The Pope said: "National leaders should be careful not to overturn" the structures that "the international community and international law have laboriously developed to preserve the dignity of the human person and the cohesion of society."