Pope Francis says hungry bellies stem from greedy gullets

Last updated on: December 6, 2013 at 6:02 pm by Billy Kangas

Pope Francis says hungry bellies stem from greedy gullets 2013-12-06T18:02:56-04:00 Billy Kangas

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Pope francis has been challenging me recently. Last week in his message to Director General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, Pope Francis stated*:*

“Hunger and malnutrition can never be considered a normal occurrence that we should be become used to, as if it were part of the system”

Critiquing the “tragic living conditions of millions of hungry and malnourished people, including numerous children,” he went on to say:

“It is a scandal that there is still hunger and malnutrition in the world! Not only must we respond to immediate emergencies, but face together, at all levels, a problem that challenges our personal and social awareness, to bring about a just and lasting solution…. Nobody should be forced to leave their land and their cultural environment for the lack of the essential means of subsistence! Paradoxically, at a time when globalization makes it possible to know of the situations of need in world and increase exchanges and human relationships, the tendency to individualism and profit at all cost seems to be growing, which leads to an attitude of indifference – on a personal level as well as that of institutions and states – to those who die of hunger or suffer malnutrition, as if it were an inescapable fact… But hunger and malnutrition can never be considered a normal occurrence that we should be become used to, as if it were part of the system. Something – continues the statement – must change in ourselves, in our minds, in our societies. What can we do? I think one important step is to decidedly break down the barriers of individualism, of closure, our slavery to profit at all costs and this not only in the dynamics of human relationships, but also in the global economic and financial dynamics.” “Solidarity cannot “be reduced to the various forms of assistance,” but “must work to ensure that an increasing number of people can be financially independent…

I’m convicted by Pope Francis’ message… we think of hunger as something other people deal with but don’t look at the ways we contribute to the cycles that cause it. So what is the reality of hunger in the world today? Here are the latest statistics on Hunger from the World Food Programme.

842 million people in the world do not have enough to eat. This number has fallen by 156 million since 1990.
The vast majority of hungry people (827 million) live in developing countries, where 14.3 percent of the population is undernourished.
Asia has the largest share of the world’s hungry people (some 552 million) but the trend is downward.
If women farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry in the world could be reduced by up to 150 million.
Poor nutrition causes nearly half (45%) of deaths in children under five – 3.1 million children each year.
One out of six children — roughly 100 million — in developing countries is underweight.
One in four of the world’s children are stunted. In developing countries the proportion can rise to one in three.
80 percent of the world’s stunted children live in just 20 countries.
66 million primary school-age children attend classes hungry across the developing world, with 23 million in Africa alone.
WFP calculates that US$3.2 billion is needed per year to reach all 66 million hungry school-age children.

The number of people who still hunger in the world today is sobering and deeply convicting to Catholics, like myself, who live with more than enough to eat. I particularly appreciated the encouragement to make addressing hunger an effort that goes beyond emergency assistance, and actually adress the systems that impact hunger.

Hunger is one of the most devastating examples of the fall out from the sacrifice of men and women to the “idols of money and consumption,” as the holy father so wisely put it elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the cause of hunger in the world today is cloaked in the very models of distribution that I participate in every day. I am grateful for this reflection and hope to see the pope to continue to urge us to end hunger through Prayer, and Charity, but also by addressing the systems that cause hunger, which are the most difficult to address, but the most important to change.

This is a consistent message sent by the Pope, who had previously criticized the global community for their systemic pursuit of money through food, at the cost of the dignity and rights of those who continue to suffer from hunger and malnutrition. See his comments below.

For more information on how you can urge policy makers to change the systems that promote hunger check out http://bread.org. They are a Christian hunger advocacy group and policy think tank that I have the great honor to work for.

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