Pope Francis supports Caritas campaign to end hunger

(Vatican Radio) Caritas Internationalis, with Pope Francis’ blessing, launched its first ever global campaign on Tuesday to end world hunger by 2025.

‘One Human Family, Food for All’ is the name of the Caritas initiative inaugurated with a “wave of prayer” set to travel around the world. Caritas groups across the globe are praying at 12pm local time, starting just east of the International Date Line and travelling west across Oceania, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, all the way back to the Pacific Ocean. You can join the Caritas prayer at 12pm here in Rome, at the church of San Francesco a Ripa in Piazza di San Franceso d'Assisi.

We spoke to Michel Roy, Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis, to find out more about this original idea. Listen to the full interview:

“The idea came when the steering committee was doing some brain-storming on the best ideas to launch this global campaign – why not route the campaign into prayer? And then, why not have everyone invited to pray at 12 o’clock, wherever they are? […] It’s not really praying for the campaign, it’s praying that we will have a world without hunger, and that we, all of us, have to work for it.

It has to start from everyone individually. We, in the northern, developed countries especially, waste a lot of food – it is said that about 40% of food which is produced is being lost. So we have a lot to do, individually, to change our ways, our behavior, our way of relating to food.

At other levels, the international community decided in 2000 to reduce hunger by half, by 2015. And the reality today is that there are as many people suffering from hunger as in 2000 – 840 million, according to the UN statistics. It’s scandalous to have so many people suffering from hunger.”