POPE LEO issued an urgent appeal to world leaders on Thursday, urging them to eradicate global hunger, describing the daily suffering of millions as “an ethical derailment.”
Speaking at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters in Rome, the pontiff condemned the use of hunger as a weapon of war, calling it a painful violation of international humanitarian law
Citing United Nations statistics, Pope Leo highlighted that approximately 673 million people go without sufficient food each day, calling this a “clear sign of a prevailing insensitivity, of a soulless economy… and of an unjust and unsustainable system of resource distribution.”
“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,” Reuters reported him saying.
The pope, the first from the United States and with a background as a missionary in Peru, has made care for the poor a central theme of his five-month tenure.
Addressing around 125 delegations attending a week-long forum marking the FAO’s 80th anniversary, he spoke mainly in Spanish about the re-emergence of food being weaponised in modern conflicts.
“International humanitarian law, without exception, prohibits attacks on civilians and on goods essential to the survival of populations,” he said.
“This seems forgotten, for, painfully, we witness the continued use of that cruel strategy. We cannot continue like this, since hunger is not humanity’s destiny but its downfall.” - October 16, 2025
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