Cardinal calls upon world leaders to tackle widespread hunger

June 04, 2012

Caritas Internationalis, the Church’s confederation of relief and development agencies, held a conference in Vienna on June 1-2 devoted to “A Future Without Hunger.”

“Every 12 seconds a child dies of hunger,” Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras said before the conference. “Hunger is not inevitable; the causes are social, economic and political.”

“If we recall that the governments of the most advanced economies have spent remarkable resources and imagination on trying to solve the current financial crisis - and more specifically to save the banking system, which contributed to the crisis through unscrupulous speculation – we cannot help but asking them whether a similar imagination and mobilization of resources will be deployed for securing access to food for one billion people and eradicating hunger,” he added at a keynote address during the conference.

“We ask world leaders in the [upcoming UN] Conference of Rio to adopt a holistic approach to sustainable development, based on an ethical model in favor of people’s well-being, practicing justice, fairness, sustainability and shared responsibility, and placing the poorest at the center of our common concern.”

 

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Further information:

• Future without Hunger
• Full text of cardinal’s talk (Caritas Internationalis)
• Caritas congress seeks a future free from hunger (Caritas Internationalis)
• Caritas envisions "Future without hunger" (Vatican Radio)