Pope Urges End to Hunger, Condemns Starvation as a Weapon of War

Pope Leo XIV on Thursday urged world leaders to act urgently to end hunger and condemned the use of starvation as a weapon of war, speaking at the Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome during a World Food Day ceremony that also marked the agency's 80th anniversary. Addressing delegates, ministers and ambassadors, the pope cited United Nations data that about 673 million people do not eat enough each day and warned that failing to respond amounts to a moral collapse.

"Allowing millions of human beings to live and die victims of hunger is a collective failure, an ethical aberration, a historical sin," the pope said, delivering most of his remarks in Spanish and concluding in English with the appeal, "We must make their suffering our own." He named conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and highlighted crises in Haiti, Afghanistan, Mali, the Central African Republic, Yemen and South Sudan as contexts where hunger has become acute. He also warned that the deliberate restriction or diversion of food in conflict constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law.

The pope linked the scale of hunger to broader economic and political choices, condemning what he described...