Pope addresses FAO Summit Rome 2008

Church in the World
7 June 2008

Pope tells world leaders hunger is ‘unacceptable’ in time of plenty

Robert Mickens


POPE BENEDICT XVI reminded international leaders gathered in Rome this week for a United Nations-sponsored food summit that hunger and malnutrition were "unacceptable" in a world equipped with plentiful resources and technical know-how.

The Pope's message - read by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone - was one of three keynote addresses to open the three-day meeting on Tuesday at the headquarters of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) near the Circus Maximus. Some 40 heads of state or government participated in the talks, aimed at long-range global food security in the light of differing views on climate change and bioenergy.

But controversy and tight security swirled around the event. The presence of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, both considered international pariahs, cast a pall over the summit. Both leaders were intentionally left on the sidelines by Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who held special dinners and receptions for other dignitaries.

However, the Pope did not meet any of the visiting leaders, despite a request from Mr Ahmadinejad for an audience. The Vatican said that the Pope was "disappointed", but the "number of requests, limited time available and previous commitments" made any meetings impossible. The Iranian leader, who repeated anti-Israel remarks, was met by at least three protests during his one-day stay in Rome.

One of the immediate goals of the FAO summit was to counter rising grain and rice costs and take concrete action to help feed some 862 million people suffering from chronic hunger - most of them in Africa. The FAO's director general, Jacques Diouf, said the international community would have to come up with US$30 billion (around £15.3bn) a year to eradicate the scourge of hunger.

In his message Pope Benedict called for "new strategies" to fight poverty and promote rural development. However, he said it would not be "possible to adopt courageous measures" unless "respect for human dignity was brought to bear at the negotiating table". Quoting a famous line of the twelfth-century Gratian's Decretum, which is also cited in the Vatican II constitution, Gaudium et Spes, the Pope warned: "Feed the person dying of hunger, because if you do not feed him you are killing him."

The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, told the assembly that food production had to increase 50 per cent by 2030 in order to feed all the world's people. Some 270, mostly Catholic, faith-based groups - including more than 30 NGOs with consultative status at the UN - sent a strong message to the summit's participants, saying that "climate change, concern for future energy supplies, an unprecedented rise in the price of cereals" demanded urgent action.

"As people of faith, we recognise the moral imperative without exception to change our lifestyle in keeping with the carrying capacity of the Earth and the protection of its climate," the four-page text said. The groups called for sustainable agricultural and rural development. "Both farmers and consumers need to be educated to value nature's intrinsic worth as gift of God, rather than to consider her a ‘resource to be exploited'," said the groups, among which were Caritas Internationalis, Pax Christi International, Franciscans International, the International Catholic Rural Association, the Union of Superiors General, and around 135 religious orders.