Pope Leo XIV on Thursday slammed the world’s failure to stop millions of people going hungry, blaming a “soulless economy” and calling on people to rethink their lifestyles and priorities.
Allowing millions of human beings to live—and die—victims of hunger is a collective failure, an ethical aberration, a historical sin.
The crisis was “a clear sign of a prevailing insensitivity, a soulless economy,” the Pope told the Food and Agriculture Organization at an event to mark its 80th anniversary. He also highlighted the “outrageous paradoxes” by which enormous amounts of food go wasted in the world “while multitudes of people scramble to find something in the garbage to put in their mouths.”
Pope Leo cited in particular Ukraine, Gaza, Haiti, Afghanistan, Mali, the Central African Republic, Yemen, and South Sudan, among other countries “where poverty has become the daily bread.”
The pontiff urged the world to rouse itself from “the fatal lethargy in which we are immersed.”
The hungry faces of so many people who still suffer challenge us and invite us to reexamine our lifestyles, our priorities, and our way of living in today’s world in general.
The World Food Agency said on Wednesday, October 15th, that 319 million people are facing acute food insecurity, including 44 million in emergency levels of hunger.
