556 Acta Apostolicae Sedis - Commentarium Officiale

III

Ad Participes Conventus Internationalis « Women and the Post-2015 Deve- lopment Agenda: the Challenges of the sustainable Development Goals? ».

To His Eminence Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace

Your Eminence,

I offer cordial greetings and encouragement to the participants of the

Second International Conference on Women, meeting in Rome from 22 to

24 May 2015. This Conference, organized by the Pontifical Council for Jus-

tice and Peace, in cooperation with the World Union of Women's Catholic

Organizations and the World Women's Alliance for Life and Family, has for

its theme Women and the Post-2015 Development Agenda: The Challenges

of the Sustainable Development Goals?.

I was pleased to learn of this timely initiative, which highlights the

concerns of Catholic women's organizations in the international discussions

leading to the drafting of a new Post-2015 Development Agenda at the

level of the United Nations. Many women and men wish to contribute to

this Agenda, as they work to defend and promote life, and to combat the

poverty, the forms of enslavement and the many injustices which women

of all ages, and throughout the world, too often experience.

Women face a variety of challenges and difficulties in various parts of

the world. In the West, at times they still experience discrimination in the

workplace; they are often forced to choose between work and family; they

not infrequently suffer violence in their lives as fiancées, wives, mothers,

sisters and grandmothers. In poor and developing countries, women bear

the heaviest burdens: it is they who travel many miles in search of water,

who too often die in childbirth, who are kidnapped for sexual exploitation

or forced into marriages at a young age or against their will. At times

they are even denied the right to life simply for being female. All of these

problems are reflected in the proposals for the Post-2015 Development

Agenda presently being discussed in the United Nations.

Issues relating to life are intrinsically connected to social questions.

When we defend the right to life, we do so in order that each life - from