Roberto de Mattei

In 1945, after the conference of Yalta, approval was given to the statute of the “United Nations”, the new international organization that would replace the “League of Nations”.

From the beginning Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira foresaw that it was destined to fail for the very same reasons for which the League of Nations had failed before it.¹⁴¹

“The United Nations is doomed to failure, because it is secularist. (…)

“Nothing is accomplished merely with the ‘idea of God’. Firstly, because God is not a figment of the imagination, but rather a reality, the absolute Being. Secondly, because from time immemorial the peoples have believed in God, or at least in gods. And wars nonetheless occurred. The solution is to be found in Christianity. And by Christianity we mean Catholicism.

“If the UN were organized under the shadow of the Papacy, under the presidency of the Vicar of Christ, by Christian people, then a universal order would not be a chimera. However, not all the peoples represented in the UN are Christian, not all the Christian peoples are Catholic. Nor are all the Catholic peoples governed by Catholics, nor is it possible for the Vicar of Christ to exercise an efficacious influence in such an ambience.

“In these circumstances, failure is inevitable. The League of Nations is already in the cemetery of History. There is another plot ready beside it: the one for the United Nations.”¹⁴² 

Notes:

(141) On the failure of the UN, especially with regard to its powerlessness to face the crimes of war and modern genocides, cf. Yves Ternon in L’Etat criminel. Les Génocides au XX siècle (Paris, Seuil, 1995) which offers a shocking description of the great mass exterminations of our century, from the Jewish genocide to that of Armenia, from that of Cambodia to those of the Soviet Union.

(142) P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “7 dias em revista”, O Legionário, no. 762, 16 March 1947. “The UN purely and simply ignored the existence of the Papacy. It, thus, repudiated the only pillar upon which normally can be organized International Law. And it failed just as the League of Nations did and for the same reasons” ID., “Um ano em revista. A consolidação das instituições democráticas. A paz no mundo”, O Legionário, no. 752, 5 January 1947, On ONU cf. and ID., “A comédia da O.N.U.”, O Legionário, no. 704, 3 February 1946.