ROME — Pope Leo XIV delivered a poignant message on Thursday, urging global leaders to embrace their responsibilities and turn their attention to the countless individuals worldwide who endure hunger, conflict, and hardship.
Speaking at the World Food Day ceremony, which also commemorated the 80th anniversary of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization at its Rome headquarters, the pontiff implored the international community not to ignore the urgent food crises affecting many regions.
In his address, Pope Leo specifically highlighted the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as the dire situations in Haiti, Afghanistan, Mali, the Central African Republic, Yemen, and South Sudan.
The pope referenced U.N. statistics revealing that approximately 673 million people struggle to have enough to eat each day.
“We cannot continue deceiving ourselves into believing that the repercussions of our failures only touch those who remain unseen,” he declared. “The hungry faces of so many who still suffer challenge us and compel us to reassess our lifestyles, our priorities, and our overall way of living in today’s world.”
Concluding his speech, Pope Leo emphasized the need for empathy, stating in English, “We must make their suffering our own,” after primarily addressing the audience in Spanish.
Leo also condemned the use of hunger as a weapon of war, but didn’t name any specific conflict or region.
“In a time when science has lengthened life expectancy, allowing millions of human beings to live, and die, struck by hunger is a collective failure, an ethical derailment, an historic offence,” he said.
Pope Leo’s warning comes as U.N. food aid agencies face severe funding cuts from their top donors that risk hurting their operations in key countries and forcing millions of people into emergency levels of hunger.
The World Food Program, traditionally the U.N.’s most-funded agency, said in a new report on Wednesday that its funding this year “has never been more challenged” – largely due to slashed outlays from the U.S. under the Trump administration and other leading Western donors.
It warned that 13.7 million of its food aid recipients could be forced into emergency levels of hunger as funding is cut. The countries facing “major disruptions” are Afghanistan, Congo, Haiti, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.
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