Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – “The growing globalization of trade markets does not always favor the availability of food and the systems of productivity are often conditioned by limited structures, as well as protective policies and speculative phenomena that relegate entire peoples to a place outside the processes of development. In light of this situation, there is a need to strongly emphasize the fact that hunger and malnutrition are unacceptable in a world which has, in fact, levels of production, resources and knowledge sufficient to put an end to such dramas and their consequences.” This was what the Holy Father Benedict XVI wrote in his Message, read this morning (June 3) by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, as representative of the Holy See at the opening session of the “High-Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bio-energy” organized by the FAO in Rome.
The Pope’s Message reiterated what he had stated in his address made during his recent visit to the UN Headquarters in New York (April 18): “there is an urgent need to overcome the ‘paradox of a multilateral consensus that continues to be in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few’” and encouraged those involved “to collaborate in an increasingly transparent way with organizations committed to closing the growing divide between rich and poor. I ask you to continue with structural reforms which, at the national level, are indispensable in order to face the problems of underdevelopment, of which hunger and malnutrition are direct consequences.”
Although aware that “all this implies an arduous and complex task,” Benedict XVI insisted that they cannot “remain indifferent to the cries of those who, in different continents, are unable to nourish themselves sufficiently enough to survive... Poverty and malnutrition are not a simple fatality, provoked by adverse environmental situations or by disastrous natural calamities." The primary right to food “is intrinsically linked to the safeguarding and defense of human life," the Message continues. Therefore, “each person has the right to life. Hence it is necessary to promote the effective implementation of this right, and peoples suffering from lack of food must be helped to become gradually capable of satisfying their own need for healthy and sufficient nourishment.”
Referring to the current problem of rising food prices, the Pontiff called for "new strategies to fight against poverty and to promote rural development. This should be carried out through structural reform processes which enable the challenges posed by security and by climate change to be faced. In addition, food availability should be increased, including productivity of small-scale farmers and guaranteeing their access to the market. The global increase in agricultural production will, nonetheless, be effective only if accompanied by the effective distribution of that production, and if it is primarily destined to satisfying essential needs.”
This path, which is certainly not an easy one, would allow among other things, to a “rediscovery of the value of the rural family...as well us, from an economic standpoint, the assurance of an effective and loving attention towards the weakest and, through the principle of subsidiarity it would allow for a direct role in the process of distribution and commercialization of agricultural products used for food production, thus reducing the cost of the intermediary efforts and favoring small-scale production.”
Benedict XVI concludes by recalling that, “only by protecting the person, is it possible to combat the main cause of hunger, that is, the tendency of man to close himself off to others, that breaks down solidarity, justifies lifestyles of consumerism, and tears the social fabric. It maintains and even deepens the fissure of inequality and neglects the deepest demands of good.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 3/6/2008)
