At a gala dinner Thursday, U.S. Ambassador Stuart Holliday read a letter of congratulations from President George Bush to President Abel Pacheco, and also announced that the United States had recommitted itself to the Costa Rican proposal in anticipation of the renewed U.N. debate on human cloning scheduled for September.
The Kolbe Prize for Peace is awarded annually to the person who has most advanced the culture of life and the dignity of the human person on the international stage. The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) is the custodian of the Kolbe Prize.
In his remarks, Pacheco said: «Human cloning, whether done with the purpose of creating identical copies of other human beings or to make scientific experiments, constitutes a grave breach of human dignity.»
More than 250 U.N. ambassadors and business and political leaders attended the event, including the Holy See’s permanent observer to the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore.
