Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) - Pope Benedict XVI has voiced “sincere appreciation” for the programmes which the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has carried out in the past sixty years “defending with competence and professionalism the cause of man, beginning precisely with the basic right of each person to be "free of hunger.” The Pope was addressing a delegation of participants at the 33rd Conference of the Rome based FAO received in audience in the Sala Clementina in Vatican in the late morning of Thursday 24 November. The delegation was led by Conference chairman Mr Cao Duc Phat and FAO director general Mr Jacques Diouf.
“Humanity is presently experiencing a worrisome paradox: - the Pope said in his address -: side by side with ever new and positive advances in the areas of the economy, science and technology, we are witnessing a continuing increase of poverty… 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 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. There is likewise a need to recognise that technical progress, necessary as it is, is not everything. 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 mentioned the importance of helping native communities, “all too often subjected to undue appropriations aimed at profit - not forgetting - that 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 initiative of FAO to convene its Member States to discuss the issue of agrarian reform and rural development “is an encouraging sign”, the Holy Father stated. “This is not a new area, but one in which the Church has always shown interest, out of particular concern for small rural farmers who represent a significant part of the active population especially in developing countries”. Pope Benedict XVI said the one course of action “might be to ensure that rural populations receive the resources and tools which they need, beginning with education and training, as well as organisational structures capable of safeguarding small family farms and cooperatives ".
Referring to a meeting in a few days time in Hong Kong for negotiations on international commerce, particularly with regard to farm products, the Pope said: “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”. In particular the Pope stressed the urgency to support the rural family, “guardian of values and a natural agent of solidarity in relationships between the generations and to the role of rural women and at the same time to children for whom not only nutrition but also basic education must be assured.”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 23/11/2005, righe 39, parole 550)
