FOOD AND CLOTHES AREN'T ENOUGH, SAYS COR UNUM LEADER

July 12, 2011: ‘The poor in many countries are lacking God, more than food or clothes’ said the Guinea-born cardinal Robert Sarah who oversees the Church's charitable work.
"I wouldn't be here if I had not seen men die for me, who gave me the faith, culture and so many things," Cardinal Sarah said last Thursday at a conference sponsored by the University of the Holy Cross. As president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council Cor Unum, the cardinal mentioned a conference to be held in Rome in November, which will consider the Christian identity of charity work.
Charity comes from God, the cardinal reminded. "We don't just want technicians," he said, but "witnesses of Christ, particularly if they work in the missions." The Vatican official, who in the 80s was bishop of Conakry in Guinea, and survived a number of persecutions in Africa, stressed that in many countries "the real lack is not food or clothes, but God."
Pope Benedict XVI has pointed out how this vacuum "is the cause of suffering in society," he said. The two-day November conference, which will also draw representatives from secular aid organizations, carries on with an initiative that responded to the Pope's first encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est."