A guard stands outside the United Nations in New York April 18. Pope Benedict XVI was to address the U.N. General Assembly later that day.

(CNS photo/Bob Roller)

UNITED NATIONS (CNS) -- Neither government nor religion has a right to change or limit human rights, because those rights flow from the dignity of each person created in God's image, Pope Benedict XVI said.

In his April 18 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, the pope insisted that human rights cannot be limited or rewritten on the basis of national interests or majority rule.

But he also said the role of religions is not to dictate government policy, but to help their members strive to find the truth, including the truth about the dignity of all people even if their religious views are different.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the pope and met privately with him before the pope addressed the General Assembly.

In his public welcoming remarks, the U.N. leader said, "The United Nations is a secular institution, composed of 192 states. We have six official languages but no official religion. We do not have a chapel -- though we do have a meditation room.

"But if you ask those of us who work for the United Nations what motivates us, many of us reply in a language of faith," he said. "We see what we do not only as a job, but as a mission. Indeed, mission is the word we use most often for our work around the world -- from peace and security to development to human rights.

"Your Holiness, in so many ways, our mission unites us with yours," he said.

In his address to the General Assembly, the German-born Pope Benedict said he came to the United Nations as a sign of his esteem for the organization, founded after the devastation of World War II when several governments ignored the fact that human beings were created by God and that the basic principles of right and wrong are written in the heart of each person.

"In consequence," he said, "freedom and human dignity were grossly violated."

As expected, Pope Benedict paid tribute to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted 60 years ago.

The pope said the document -- proclaiming the equality of all people, the basic right to life and to freedom, liberty of conscience and the free practice of religion -- was the result of "a convergence of different religious and cultural traditions."

The traditions, he said, were determined to ensure that concern for and protection of the human person was the center of attention in the workings of societies, governments and institutions.

"The rights recognized and expounded in the declaration apply to everyone by virtue of the common origin of the person, who remains the high point of God's creative design for the world and for history," the pope said.

"They are based on the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations," he said.

Pope Benedict said an attempt to deny that human rights have a foundation in the way God created human beings and that they are common to all people creates a real risk that they will be limited "in the name of different cultural, political, social and even religious outlooks."