Pope Says World Hunger a Collective Failure

October 17, 2025

“Allowing millions of human beings to live — and die — as victims of hunger is a collective failure, an ethical aberration, a historical fault,” Pope Leo XIV said on World Food Day yesterday. Source: OSV News.

The Pope addressed world leaders and government representatives at the Rome headquarters of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. In addition to marking World Food Day, the delegates were celebrating the 80th anniversary of FAO’s establishment.

In his speech, Pope Leo decried the fact that while humanity has made huge advances in technology, medicine, agriculture and transportation, 673 million people go to bed hungry each night, and 2.3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.

The FAO statistics are not just numbers, he said, “behind each of these numbers is a broken life, a vulnerable community.”

“This is not a coincidence, but the clear sign of a prevailing insensitivity, of a soulless economy, of a questionable model of development, and of an unjust and unsustainable system of resource distribution.”

Perhaps referring to the situation in Gaza, but also to other war zones, the Pope said that “current conflict scenarios have brought back the use of food as a weapon of war”…

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