The Holy See and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Working Toward a Legal Anthropology of Human Rights and the Family (Special Issue: The Nature of Marriage and Its Various Aspects‪)‬

Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council on the Family ("Pontifical Council"), speaks directly to the legal community with an important and timely message. It comes from a dicastery of the Roman Curia, which, together with its head, the Roman Pontiff, makes up the Holy See--a subject of rights and duties on the international level. (1) In his article, The Nature of Marriage and Its Various Aspects, (2) Cardinal Trujillo calls for the development of an anthropology on sexuality, marriage, and the family based on natural law, (3) which would include an analysis regarding the nature of the family, its link to the human person, (4) and the proper role of the state. (5) This is not the first time he has directed such an appeal to the legal community. At the invitation of the Pontifical Council, a group of experts gathered together in 1998, during the anniversary year of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights ("UDHR"). (6) At that meeting, participants discussed the theme of "Human Rights and the Rights of the Family" and their reflections are reproduced in a conference document entitled The Family and Human Rights. (7) The reflections contained in the document forge the way in developing a legal anthropology in the area of human rights and the family.