A couple of weeks ago I invited two friends of mine - a married couple - for dinner at my home. It was a hurried invitation and I did not have time to prepare, so they brought the sauce and the dessert while I provided the pasta and the wine. We had an enjoyable evening discussing their missionary work in several parts of the world.
Dinner, dessert and coffee over, I tried to tidy things up. I was going to throw away the little pasta and sauce that remained.
"Don't throw it away", both said together.
"There is so little it's not worth keeping it", I answered.
"We worked in Africa", they said. "We saw people dying of hunger. So now we never throw any food away."
I reflected on what they said. We have a lifestyle that is wasteful. The food we throw away in our rubbish bins can provide a basic means of existence for so many people. Is such a wasteful lifestyle not also sinful?
Addressing this subject in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the beginning of May the Pope said one of the most urgent and critical social problems afflicting the world today is the "shameful tragedy that one-fifth of humanity still goes hungry".
The list of the statistics of shame is never-ending. Consider the following:
• Some 25,000 people die from hunger every day, and a child dies of malnutrition or starvation every six seconds, according to the United Nations' World Food Programme.
• In 2008, the number of undernourished people in the world rose to 963 million (more than the combined populations of the US, Canada and the EU), a rise of 40 million since 2007.
• The majority of undernourished people live in developing countries, of which about 65 per cent live in India, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.
• The total food surplus of the US alone could satisfy every empty stomach in Africa; France's leftovers could feed the hungry in Democratic Republic of Congo, and Italy's could feed Ethiopia's undernourished.
Shocking, isn't it?
Now consider the most shocking comment of them all. Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Programme, said there is enough food in the world today for everyone to have the nourishment necessary for a healthy and productive life.
This means that all this suffering, pain and deaths can be avoided. The scandal is definitively greater. It is not a problem that we cannot solve or do anything about. It is a problem that we can and should solve.
The Pope said: "For Christians, who regularly ask God to 'give us this day our daily bread', it is a shameful tragedy" that so many people go hungry and are malnourished.
Since every six seconds one child dies of malnutrition it means that while you were reading this article over 40 children died of hunger.
What are you going to do about it?