Pope Leo has urged global leaders to end world hunger in a bombshell speech to a UN agency.
On Thursday, October 16, during a visit to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters in Rome, the pope also condemned the use of hunger as a weapon of war.
He noted, "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, a historic offence."
The first American pope spent much of his career before the papacy as a missionary in Peru and has made caring for the poor a focus of his five-month tenure.
He spoke on Thursday to 125 delegations attending a weeklong forum coinciding with the FAO's 80th anniversary.
The pope, speaking mainly in Spanish, also slammed the "soulless economy" as he presented UN data that revealed about 673 million people were not eating enough each day.
Pope Leo added, "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."
The World Food Agency (WFP) said on Wednesday that 319 million people are facing acute food insecurity, including 44 million in emergency levels of hunger.
