The right to be 'free of hunger'

WHEN on November 24 Pope Benedict XVI addressed the participants of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) conference at the Vatican, he impressed his listeners with his personal knowledge of the situation of food and agriculture all over the world.

Indeed, the Holy Father, who during these eight months as Universal Pastor of the Catholic Church has amazingly succeeded in drawing such huge crowds, has already left the healthy impression that he's not only a Pope who appeals to crowds, but above all a "humble genius" that one has to listen to very attentively and read his writings in depth. He is not verbose but goes straight to the point in clear and simple words and very convincingly.

Her address to the participants of the FAO conference proved this. He opened his address by saying that "today's meeting is an appropriate occasion to express my sincere appreciation for the programmes which the FAO has carried out in the past 60 years, defending with competence and professionalism the cause of man, beginning precisely with the basic right of each person to be free of hunger".

Pope Benedict stressed that humanity is presently experiencing a worrisome paradox: side by with ever new and positive advances in the areas of the economy, science and technology, these days we are witnessing a continuing growth in poverty. No one denies this.

In front of this global situation the Holy Father told the conference participants: "Today, more than ever, there is a need for concrete, effective instruments for eliminating the potential for conflict between different cultural, ethnic and religious visions. There is a need to base international religions' visions. There is a need to base international relations on respect for the person and on the cardinal principles of peaceful coexistence, fidelity to commitments undertaken and mutual acceptance by the peoples who make up the one human family".

Pope Benedict stressed that today there is an indispensable need to recognise that technical progress, necessary as it is, is not everything, and went on: "True progress is that alone which integrally safeguards the dignity of the human being and which enables each people to share its own spiritual and material resources for the benefit of all."

The Holy Father concluded his address with a fatherly appeal, saying: "It must not be forgotten that, while some areas are subject to international measures and controls, millions of people are condemned to hunger, even outright starvation in areas where violent conflicts are taking place, conflicts which public opinion tends to neglect because they are considered internal, ethnic or tribal.

"Yet these conflicts have seen human lives systematically eliminated while people have been uprooted from their lands and at times forced, in order to flee certain death, to leave their precarious settlements in refugee camps... The Holy See is confident that a sense of responsibility and solidarity with the most disadvantaged will prevail, so that narrow interests and the logic of power will be set aside."