(October 15, 2010) Pope Benedict XVI is urging individuals, groups, organizations,
as well as the international community to fight the scourge of hunger, malnutrition
and poverty in the world through concrete initiatives of authentic human development
that are informed by charity and inspired by truth. The Pope’s exhortation came
in his message for the Oct. 16th World Food Day, sponsored by the Rome-based United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO. The theme of this year’s observance
on Saturday is ‘United Against Hunger.” “Everyone….needs to give priority to one
of the most urgent goals for the human family: freedom from hunger,” the Pope wrote
in his message to FAO director general, Jacques Diouf. The efforts to achieve this
goal will surely help to build up the unity of the human family throughout the world,
he said. If the international community is to be truly “united” against hunger, then
poverty must be overcome through authentic human development, based on the idea of
the person as a unity of body, soul and spirit. Pope Benedict lamented that today
there is a tendency to limit the vision of development to the material needs of the
person, especially through access to technology; yet, he said, authentic development
is not simply a function of what a person “has”, it must also embrace higher values
of fraternity, solidarity and the common good. Pope Benedict appreciated the international
community’s recent decision to protect the right to water, saying it is essential
to human nutrition, to rural activities and to the conservation of nature. The symbolic
value of this precious commodity, he said, invites all to revise present patterns
of behaviour in order that the present and future generations may have access to it.