Pope appeals for end to conflicts, climate change in
fight against hunger, migration
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| Pope Francis (L) and FAO Director-General Jose Graziano Da Silva (R), stand next to a marble statue donated by the pontiff during his visit to the FAO on World Food Day, 16 October 2017.- ANSA |
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Monday appealed
to the international community not only to guarantee enough production and fair distribution of food
for all but also to ensure the right of every human being to feed
himself according to his needs without being forced to leave his home and
loved ones.
He made the call at the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) in Rome, where he marked World
Food Day, which this year has as its theme, “Change the future of
migration. Invest in Food Security and rural development.” (Click
here for the video of the Pope's FAO visit)
Conflicts and climate-change
Addressing the UN’s specialized agency that leads the
international community’s fight against hunger and malnutrition in the world,
the Pope urged governments to work together to end the conflicts and
climate-change related disasters that force people to leave their
homes in search of their daily bread. Citing the 2016 Paris climate accord in
which governments committed themselves to combatting global warming, the Pope
who spoke in Spanish, regretted that “unfortunately some are distancing
themselves from it.”
He noted that negligence and greed over the
world's limited resources are harming the planet and its most vulnerable
people, forcing many to abandon their homes in search of work and food.
He called for a change in lifestyle and the use of resources, adding it cannot
be left for others to do.
World hunger
A UN report in September pointed out that the number of
chronically hungry people in the world was growing once more after a decade of
decline because of ongoing conflicts and floods and droughts triggered by
climate change. While the 815 million chronically undernourished people
last year is still below the 900 million registered in 2000, the UN warned that
the increase is cause for great concern.
Love, fraternity, solidarity
Describing population control as a “false
solution” to tackling hunger and malnutrition in the world, Pope Francis said
what is needed instead is a better management of the earth’s
abundant resources and prevention of waste in food and resources.
What is needed, he said, is a new model of international cooperation based on love,
fraternity and solidarity that respond to the needs of the
poorest. Pity, he pointed out, is limited to emergency aid, but love
inspires justice that is needed to bring about a just social order.
As a token of his visit and message, Pope Francis gifted to
the UN food agency a marble sculpture of Aylan, the three-year-old
Syrian toddler of Kurdish origin, whose image in the media made global
headlines after his body washed up on a Turkish beach in September 2015 after
he drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. The Vatican explained that the sculpture
featuring a weeping angel over the little boy's corpse, symbolized the tragedy
of migration.
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