On World Water Day (March 22), the Italian pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai—the world’s fair, postponed because of Covid—organized an event entitled “’Pursuing the Human Right to Water.”

Emphasizing that access to water is a universal human right, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s Secretary of State, sent an Italian-language message to the event.

“There is a tendency regarding the management of water to privatize, transforming this precious resource into a product that is subject to the laws of the market,” he wrote. “This approach risks creating serious inequality in guaranteeing access to this primary good to every human being, in particular the most vulnerable.”