Pope speaks of food crisis, China quake

(May 26, 2008) Pope Benedict XVI urged all Christians on Sunday to help international efforts to resolve a food price crisis that threatens to make millions more people go hungry, ahead of a food summit in Rome early next month. "Whoever is nourished by the bread of Christ cannot remain indifferent before those who, in our times too, are deprived of daily bread," he said, referring to the Holy Eucharist, the Body of Christ. "This problem is getting more and more serious and the international community is struggling to resolve it," said the German-born pontiff in his weekly midday “Angelus” address to pilgrims at St. Peter's Square in Rome. He was speaking on the day’s liturgical feast of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation is hosting a summit in Rome, June 3-5, to discuss the difficulties caused by record-high commodity prices, which have doubled the food import bills of the poorest countries in the past two years. With food protests and riots already seen in some developing countries, the summit will discuss the impact on food security of climate change and biofuel use, which has switched millions of tonnes of cereals from food to fuel production.
Pope Benedict also used his Sunday ‘Angelus’ to urge brotherly solidarity for the survivors of the devastating earthquake in China. “I greet with great affection the Chinese-speaking pilgrims who have come to Rome from all over Italy for World Day of Prayer for the Church in China,” he told the crowd in St. Peter's Square. He said he was entrusting to God's mercy the more than 65,000 Chinese who perished in the May 12 quake in Sichuan province and that he felt personally close to “all those who are living through hours of anguish and tribulation.” “Thanks to brotherly solidarity, may the population of those areas return quickly to normal daily life,” the pontiff said. Pope Benedict had designated Saturday, May 24, the feast of Our Lady of Help of Christians as a day of prayer for the Church in China, where faithful loyal to the pope risk persecution, including imprisonment. China's officially atheistic Communist Party forced Chinese Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951, and the two sides have not restored formal ties. Beijing sees the tradition of the pope naming his own bishops as interference in the country’s internal matters. Many of China's estimated 12 million Catholics worship in congregations outside the state-approved church. Pope Benedict told the pilgrims he was praying for China's Catholics, “who amid daily trials, continue to believe, to hope, to love, so that they will never fear speaking about Jesus to the world.” He urged them to “stay united” to the Rome-based Church. Last year, the Pope addressed a special letter to Chinese Catholics, praising the underground Church, but also urging the faithful to reconcile with followers of the official Chinese church.