1994 World Cup Final Highlights

[Heinz Francis]

I am a negotiator. I have an almost 30-year career in conflict resolution. The essence of the job, as I understand it, is fostering trust. Even the most bitter, heated and protracted conflicts may be solved once trust is established. The opposite is also true. Even relatively minor disagreements can prevent conflict resolution if there is no trust between the parties.

Trust depends on identifying common interests, but how do we find a set of interests shared by Ukraine, the West, and Russia? For our country, any shared sense of trust would have to be hard-won. Ukraine has suffered far too many wounds from being too trusting.

Just days earlier, they had believed this enemy was their brother. The enemy swore friendship to us, signed treaties to this effect, and continuously highlighted everything that we had in common. Then they turned and attacked us, first occupying Crimea then drowning the Donbas region in blood. We could not wrap our heads around such unthinkable developments.

Next came Ilovaisk in August 2014. Russian regular forces, having invaded Ukraine, promised our encircled soldiers a humanitarian corridor to withdraw. Instead, they treacherously opening fire on the defenseless retreating columns. Hundreds died. This war crime will remain a shameful stain on the uniform of every member of the Russian military.

Another older but related wound continues to cast a dark shadow over modern Ukrainian history. I am referring to the events that unfolded in Budapest some 25 years ago. Former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, who was a direct participant, has described them to me.

Having placed its trust in the guarantees offered by the US, the UK, and Russia, Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum on December 5, 1994. By doing so, Ukraine willingly relinquished its nuclear arsenal, the third largest in the world at the time.

The occupation of Crimea, the battles of Ilovaisk and Donetsk Airport, the capture of Debaltseve after the signing of the second Minsk Agreements, the Russian shelling of Ukrainian civilians in Mariupol and Kramatorsk, can all be traced back to the betrayal of Budapest.

Ukrainians have come a long way since 2014 and have come to accept the fact that we must rely primarily on our own resources. The Ukrainian army is now among the strongest in Central and Eastern Europe. Its combat experience, as well as its experience of losses, has made it infinitely stronger. Today, we have more than 350,000 combat veterans ready to stand up and defend our country.

Psychologically, we are also well past the stage that the Western world has yet to approach. This lack of psychological preparedness makes it even harder for people in Rome, Brussels or Vienna to appreciate the nature of the threat they face. Nevertheless, they will have to do so eventually.

So far, it is clear that attempts to appease Moscow by removing the occupation of Crimea from the international agenda have only served to encourage Russia. Rather than moderating its aggressive stance, Russia is fast transforming Crimea into an imposing military stronghold designed to strengthen its ability to dominate the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Middle East. This is taking place in a climate of complete impunity, in full view of the international community and against a backdrop of flagrant human rights abuses in Russian-occupied Crimea itself.

In a way, history has now come full circle. By agreeing to give up its nuclear arsenal in 1994, Ukraine saved the Western world trillions of dollars in defense spending over the following two decades. Failure to live up to the spirit of the Budapest Memorandum and protect Crimea from occupation in 2014 is now forcing the West to increase defense expenditures dramatically.

Ukraine sees at least two directions offering the promise of meaningful progress within the Budapest framework. These include a qualitatively new level of military and technical support for Ukraine, along with help in bringing the aggressor state to justice.

On June 16, 2022, the Fdration Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) announced the 16 cities chosen to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup to be jointly hosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States; 11 of those cities are located throughout the U.S. The 2026 FIFA World Cup will include 48 different national teams and a total of 80 matches, making it the biggest FIFA World Cup tournament in history.

A major global event, the 1994 FIFA World Cup was highly anticipated for players, spectators, and the U.S. government itself. While the FIFA World Cup is a spectacular event on its own, what is also striking is the level of coordination and work that goes into planning the World Cup. Every time a country hosts a World Cup tournament, the national government must coordinate among many different agencies and departments to ensure the success of the many aspects of a premier world sporting event.

During the 1994 World Cup, the U.S. made it out of the group stage only to be eliminated by Brazil, on July 4th no less. The championship game took place at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, between Brazil and Italy. After 120 minutes without a single goal, the championship was decided for the first time by a penalty shoot-out. At the start of the fifth round, Italian star Roberto Baggio famously made his stunning miss, giving Brazil the 3-2 win.

The 1994 FIFA World Cup tournament was deemed a success, bringing in a record amount of revenue, the highest number of stadium attendance in the history of the competition, and the love of the beautiful game to a new generation of Americans.

In recent decades, television has spearheaded a communications revolution which has profoundly affected family life. Today television is a primary source of news, information and entertainment for countless families, shaping their attitudes and opinions, their values and patterns of behaviour.

Television can enrich family life. It can draw family members closer together and foster their solidarity with other families and with the community at large. It can increase not only their general knowledge but also their religious knowledge, making it possible for them to hear God's word, to strengthen their religious identity, and to nurture their moral and spiritual life.

Television can also harm family life: by propagating degrading values and models of behaviour, by broadcasting pornography and graphic depictions of brutal violence; by inculcating moral relativism and religious scepticism; by spreading distorted, manipulative accounts of news events and current issues; by carrying exploitative advertising that appeals to base instincts, and by glorifying false visions of life that obstruct the realization of mutual respect, of justice and of peace.

Even when television programmes themselves are not morally objectionable, television can still have negative effects on the family. It can isolate family members in their private worlds, cutting them off from authentic interpersonal relations; it can also divide the family by alienating parents from children and children from parents.

In this message, I wish especially to highlight the responsibilities of parents, of the men and women of the television industry, of public authorities, and of those with pastoral and educational duties in the Church. In their hands lies the power to make television an ever more effective medium in helping families to fulfil their role as a force for moral and social renewal.

God has entrusted parents with the grave responsibility of helping their children "to seek the truth from their earliest years and to live in conformity with the truth, to seek the good and promote it (Message for the 1991 World Day of Peace, No. 3). It is therefore their duty to lead their children to appreciate "whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious" (Phil 4:8).

Forming children's viewing habits will sometimes mean simply turning off the television set: because there are better things to do, because consideration for other family members requires it, or because indiscriminate television viewing can be harmful. Parents who make regular, prolonged use of television as a kind of electronic baby-sitter surrender their role as the primary educators of their children. Such dependence on television can deprive family members of opportunities to interact with one another through conversation, shared activities and common prayer. Wise parents are also aware that even good programmes should be supplemented by other sources of news, entertainment, education and culture.

To guarantee that the television industry will safeguard the rights of the family, parents should express their legitimate concerns to media managers and producers. Sometimes they will find it useful to join with others in associations which represent their interests in relation to the media, to sponsors and advertisers, and to public authorities.

In fulfilling its public responsibilities, the television industry should develop and observe a code of ethics which includes a commitment to serving the needs of families and to promoting values supportive of family life. Media councils, with members from both the industry and the general public, are also a highly desirable way of making television more responsive to the needs and values of its audiences.

Whether television channels are under public or private management, they represent a public trust for the service of the common good; they are not the mere private preserve of commercial interests or an instrument of power or propaganda for social, economic or political elites; they exist to serve the well-being of society as a whole.

Thus, as the fundamental "cell" of society, the family deserves to be assisted and defended by appropriate measures of the State and other institutions (cf. Message for the 1994 World Day of Peace, No. 5). This points to certain responsibilities on the part of public authorities where television is concerned.

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