UN food official lauds commitment of Pope Francis, Church to ending hunger

(May 23, 2013) The commitment of Pope Francis and the Catholic Church to ending hunger, has been praised by the director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization – FAO. “On a scale of 1 to 10, the Pope’s interest in eradicating hunger is at 11,” José Graziano da Silva said in an interview on Monday, adding that this is not only an economic topic but also one of a moral nature.
Criticizing “the combination we have today, of producing too much, and at the same time wasting,” Graziano added that “we throw away or waste too much food, almost one third of the world production. This is putting an almost unsustainable pressure on the environment. We cannot follow this sort of model,” he said. “What is left over in a European restaurant today, those leftovers in today’s Europe in crisis, would enable 200 million more people to be fed,” he said. “To reconvert production and consumption is also part of the work of the Catholic Church, and we have agreed that we must give priority to the topic of poverty and hunger,” he added.