Possibly the best piece of news over the Christmas period was the commitment by Tesco, the well-known British supermarket chain, that they will henceforth never throw away any surplus, unsold food and that all will be given away to charity.

Surely if Tesco can do this, then so many other similar food-handling businesses, everywhere in the world, should at least try to study how Tesco will be managing this initiative and find ways of imitating it.

I’ve read enough academic articles and books on economic development theory where the point is made that in this whole wide world of ours, every year – even making due allowances for droughts, natural disasters, wars and what have you – the food that we produce, at least in nominal, quantitative terms, is enough to ensure that nobody should ever, anywhere, die of hunger.

Friends of mine who returned from holidaying in New York told me that it is simply disgusting the amount of good food that is thrown away in that city’s hotels, restaurants and similar businesses.

Surely in a big, modern nation like the US – and indeed this is applicable in so many other major cities – formal charity chains or free-to-take shops should not be an impossible task to organise to ensure that those who have no home, those who sleep unfed under railway bridges or in cardboard boxes in shop doorways (and often die from the cold) at least do not go one single day in which they do not get a meal… even if of sorts.

The Catholic Church is doing a lot for the poor of the world. At Caritas, both the Caritas Internationalis and its various diocesan offshoots, there are some extremely wise and hardworking people always thinking and inventing ways to follow the loving Lord’s wish that we all “feed the hungry”.

Big charity indeed needs big capital to operate, and there are indeed many rich people in the world who do have big hearts

For Caritas Internationalis, I have mulled for many years over an idea that may really give it an international profile that may go far in this area. It is by no means original, and in some sense I copied it from the way Médecins Sans Frontières operates.

Those great-hearted doctors are always on the move, flying from one disaster area to another in the world.

So, I thought, why shouldn’t Caritas Internationalis, or even the Vatican itself, not have an Air Caritas of its own: that is, a cargo plane airline constantly picking up food from places in the world where it may be in surplus to simply fly it to organisations in other countries where it is needed by Church (and by this I mean all religions) organisations to distribute to the poor and hungry?

I appreciate that there may be initial set-up capital and annual recurrent costs for such a project to get up and running.

But this is where the Church’s diplomacy should really move…

Get the Zuckerbergs, Bransons, Apples, Microsofts, AliBabas and all the really big super-billionaires of this world convinced that this does not constitute a denominational Church project but rather, one for all the poor of the world

And indeed, these Air Caritas cargo planes, flying with food to where it is most needed, from wherever it is most available, could really be this age’s project of projects, even bigger than the United Nations itself.

Yes, big charity indeed needs big capital to operate, and there are indeed many rich people in the world who do have big hearts and would be ready to be associated with such a project.

Perhaps the local Nunzio might give this humble, purely personal, idea some thought and see what they have to say about it in Rome.

John Consiglio teaches economicsat the University of Malta.