At dinner on Christmas Day in a cousin's house my nearest table companion was a Bosnian Muslim young man. Off his own bat he spoke to me of the effective peace work of the Holy See in his country, beginning in 1993. The Bosnians and Croats were then locked in bloody conflict. The intervention of the Vatican's justice and peace department helped significantly, he said, in mollifying Croatian war policies, leading to the peace accord between the two sides agreed in Washington in 1994.

Later, Pope John Paul's pastoral visit, confined at that time to Sarajevo in Bosnia, was a helpful, symbolic gesture in promoting the task of reconciliation between Bosnia and Croatia. The Catholic Church's influence at this juncture certainly saved lives. This was heartening testimony offered by an independent witness with first-hand experience.

One of the important players in this episode was Dublin priest Mgr Diarmuid Martin, secretary of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace. He will be consecrated a bishop by Pope John Paul in Rome tomorrow. The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, established in 1967, is the executive arm of Pope John Paul's justice and peace ministry worldwide. It is currently headed by Vietnamese-born Archbishop Nguyen Van Thuon, who spent 17 years in prison, eight of which were in solitary confinement. In addition to being an able negotiator, Archbishop Van Thuon brings impressive personal credentials to his job as an agent of justice and reconciliation.

Local justice and peace commissions exist in most countries. They monitor and intervene on human-rights issues in their immediate societies and interact with their parent council in Rome. The Irish Justice and Peace Commission at Booterstown Avenue, Dublin, is directed by Mr Jerome Connolly.

Concern for human rights is now the strongest social current in papal thinking, teaching and witness. Pope John Paul's World Day of Peace messages on January 1st this year and last year have largely focused on human rights themes. They are hailed both within and without the church as sophisticated and progressive contributions to the quest for justice and peace.

It is now well established that the doctrine of human rights is an essential instrument in this enterprise. Their pursuit has been described by the Pope as nothing less than an "apostolate". John Paul's growing preoccupation with human rights coincides with the recent 50th anniversary of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A reading of papal social encyclicals reveals a steady development of both his theology and philosophy of human rights, which also feature prominently in his addresses on pastoral visits abroad. I have heard him eloquently in action in this vein in Cuba last January.

In March last in Nigeria he was perilously outspoken on human-rights issues during the rule of the late Gen Abacha. In Latin America I have witnessed the work on the ground of local church agencies in the forefront of the struggle for human rights; an evangelical engagement which, regrettably, has all too often not been endorsed by the church's central authority. In countries such as Brazil and El Salvador there have actually been martyrs to this cause.

Seminal teaching on what was much later to be described as human rights is to be found in the New Testament, "that great assertion of human dignity", as Fintan O'Toole has recently described these Christian source books. But the language of human rights began outside the church.

The doctrine of the rights of man, in fact, first appeared in the 18th century and was construed as a secular weapon hostile to the church. Papal rejection of a "rights of man culture" culminated in Pope Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors (1864). By the end of the 19th century, however, Pope Leo XIII was freely using "rights" language in his landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum: "rights indeed, by whomsoever possessed, must be religiously protected".

A comprehensive Catholic "charter of rights" was assembled in Pope John XXIII's encyclical Pacem in Terris (1963). He regarded all these rights as entailments arising from the fundamental right to life of the person. The Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Lib- erty (1965) asserted the critical right to freedom of conscience. Human rights, according to the council, emerge both from the revealed word of God and from reason itself.

The development of the doctrine of rights has been and is an evolutionary process in both the religious and secular domains. This is currently reflected in the Pope's now clear opposition to the death penalty. Likewise, there is a growing consensus on the unacceptability of warfare in a nuclear era as a legitimate means of maintaining international order.

In his World Peace message in January 1998, Pope John Paul advocates an inclusive understanding of human rights, insisting on their universality and indivisibility in the face of those who would claim exemptions on the grounds of "cultural specificity". He underlines the truth that human rights are "proclaimed but not conferred". This means they derive from the nature of the human person and are, therefore, in no way dependent for their existence on recognition by the state by way of public legislation.

However, the Pope acknowledges the historical violations of human rights attributable to the church and its members: "all of us bear the burden of the errors and faults of those who have gone before us". Moreover, the English Catholic bishops, writing recently on human rights, delivered a timely reminder on the dangers of unjust behaviour on the part of the institutional church: "responsible bodies of the church can never stop examining their own procedures and performances to ensure that human rights are observed in all they do."

The Pope returned to the topic of human rights in St Peter's on New Year's Day. A new respect for human rights, he declared, was the secret of "true peace". The episcopal consecration of Mgr Diarmuid Martin there tomorrow further underlines the singular importance of justice and peace in Pope John Paul's apostolic ministry.

Father Tom Stack is parish priest at Milltown in Dublin and a columnist with the Irish Catholic.