Pope: weapons circulate where food supplies are
obstructed
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis
says it is a “strange paradox” that food often cannot get through to those
suffering due to war but weapons can.
He was speaking on Monday
during his first visit to the World
Food Program, the Rome-based United Nations agency that fights hunger.
WFP is currently engaged in
and committed to the “One Future Zero Hunger” Global Goal set by world leaders
for 2030.
Reflecting bitterly on the
fact that that while the distribution of food supplies are often obstructed in
war zones, weapons - Pope Francis said - are trafficked freely.
“As a result, wars are fed,
not persons” and he continued: “In some cases hunger itself is used as a weapon
of war” as the number of people dying of hunger and thirst is added
to that of battlefield casualties and the civilian victims of conflicts and
attacks.
“We are fully aware of this –
he said – yet we allow our conscience to be anesthetized”.
The Pope also lamented
that the speed and volume of information in today's world has led to what he
called the “naturalization” of extreme poverty.
In other words – he said –
little by little we are growing immune to other people’s tragedies, seeing them
as something “natural”: “we are bombarded by so many images that we see pain,
but do not touch it; we hear weeping, but do not comfort it; we see thirst but
do not satisfy it”.
Urging us to stop to seeing
extreme poverty as a statistic rather than a reality he said “poverty has a
face! It has the face of a child; the face of a family, the face of people
young and old. It has the face of widespread unemployment and lack of
opportunity. It has the face of forced migrants and of empty or destroyed
home”.
As long as poverty has no
face the Pope pointed out: “we run the risk of bureaucratizing the suffering of
others.”
Noting yet another paradox of
our culture, Francis said that hunger persists despite a surplus of food, and
global waste.
The cause of food
shortage – the Pope said – is to be found in a selfish and wrong distribution
of resources and in the “merchandising” of food. “we – he said - have made the
fruits of the earth – a gift to humanity – ‘commodities’ for a few. We need to
be reminded that food discarded is food stolen from the table of the poor
and the starving.
Pope Francis concluded his
address to a packed auditorium of WFP officials referring to one of the axioms
of Christianity: "I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you
gave me something to drink". It is a principle – he said - which is
independent of creeds and convictions and it can serve as a golden rule and as
a measure of our humanity as we continue to seek creative solutions of change
and transformation.
(Linda Bordoni)
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