Vatican tells UN rights council that cognitive decline does not erase human dignity

Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva, addressed the 63rd regular session of the Human Rights Council. The dignity of the person is a gift from God that cannot be erased, he said, even when cognitive capacity, intellect or awareness weaken or fail. He spoke during the interactive dialogue with the Independent Expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons.

Balestrero pointed to a risk identified in earlier reports: when cognitive capacity is reduced, a person "can be increasingly represented by others instead of being heard, as if diminished capacity implied diminished personhood." That pattern, he warned, reverses a basic human rights principle and reduces an older person's moral agency to cognitive function.

Dignity recognized in the Universal Declaration

Citing Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica humanitas, Balestrero said the person is not defined by awareness, intellect or capacities, qualities that "can weaken or even disappear." The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the dignity of the person "as the foundation of equal and inalienable rights," he said, and that dignity "does not fade along with" capacities that decline.

Balestrero said this dignity is recognized "above all" within the family and the community, where each person is heard and supported. "When older persons with cognitive impairment can live in such settings, they are not considered a burden to be disposed of, but valuable members of society," he said. Dependence and frailty "neither deny nor obscure this dignity," he added, but "are a manifestation of the human condition."

Active members able to receive and to contribute

Older people with cognitive impairment "continue to retain and exercise their rights, often through forms of support and relationship," Balestrero said. That requires a response that does not replace their voice. "The response must not be substitution, but dialogue, understanding and accompaniment," so that older people remain "active members of society, able both to receive and to contribute."