Today,June 13, marked the first ever visit by a Pope to the World Food Programme headquarters: Even hunger is used as a weapon. Pain must not be “bureaucratised”, it is important to remember people’s stories and faces.
“Whereas forms of aid and development projects are obstructed by involved and incomprehensible political decisions, skewed ideological visions and impenetrable customs barriers, weaponry is not. It makes no difference where arms come from; they circulate with brazen and virtually absolute freedom in many parts of the world.” Francis denounced this during his visit – the first ever by a pontiff – to the World Food Programme headquarters in Rome today. We must not “bureaucratise” pain, Francis said, stressing that in the face of wars, migration and worldwide hunger, we must remember victims’ “faces” and “stories”.
In our “interconnected world marked by instant communications” “geographical distances seem to be shrinking,” the Pope said. “We can immediately know what is happening on the other side of the planet” but an “information overload is gradually leading to the “naturalization” of extreme poverty”. In other words, we are slowly becoming immune to the tragedies of others and see them as something “natural”. “We are bombarded by so many images that we see pain, but do not touch it; we hear weeping, but do not comfort it; we see thirst but do not satisfy it. All those human lives turn into one more news story. While the headlines may change, the pain, the hunger and the thirst remain.”
“It is not enough,” the Pope said, “to offer broad reflections or engage in endless discussion, constantly repeating things everyone knows. We need to “de-naturalize” extreme poverty, to stop seeing it as a statistic rather than a reality. Why? Because poverty has a face! It has the face of a child; it has the face of a family; it has the face of people, young and old. It has the face of widespread unemployment and lack of opportunity. It has the face of forced migrations, and of empty or destroyed homes. We cannot “naturalize” the fact that so many people are starving. We cannot simply say that their situation is the result of blind fate and that nothing can be done about it. Once poverty no longer has a face, we can yield to the temptation of discussing “hunger”, “food” and “violence” as concepts, without reference to the real people knocking on our doors today. Without faces and stories, human lives become statistics and we run the risk of bureaucratizing the sufferings of others. Bureaucracies shuffle papers; compassion deals with people.”
Going straight to the heart of the hunger issue, Francis stated: “Let us be clear. Food shortage is not something natural, it is not a given, something obvious or self-evident. The fact that today, well into the twenty-first century, so many people suffer from this scourge is due to a selfish and wrong distribution of resources, to the “merchandizing” of food.” “We need to be reminded,” the Pope said, “that food discarded is, in a certain sense stolen, from the table of poor and the starving.” “We need to be frank: some issues have been bureaucratized. Some activities have been ‘shelved’.”
“Lately,” the Pope said, “war and the threat of war have been uppermost in our minds and our discussions. Thus, given the wide gamut of present conflicts, arms seem to have gained unprecedented importance, completely sidelining other ways of resolving the issues at hand. This approach is so deeply engrained and taken for granted that it prevents food supplies from being distributed in war zones, in violation of the most fundamental and age-old principles and rules of international law. We thus find ourselves faced with a strange paradox,” Francis stressed. “ Whereas forms of aid and development projects are obstructed by involved and incomprehensible political decisions, skewed ideological visions and impenetrable customs barriers, weaponry is not. It makes no difference where arms come from; they circulate with brazen and virtually absolute freedom in many parts of the world. As a result, wars are fed, not persons. In some cases, hunger itself is used as a weapon of war. The death count multiplies because the number of people dying of hunger and thirst is added to that of battlefield casualties and the civilian victims of conflicts and attacks. We are fully aware of this, yet we allow our conscience to be anesthetized. We become desensitized. Force then becomes our one way of acting, and power becomes our only goal. Those who are most vulnerable not only suffer the effects of war but also see obstacles placed in the way of help. Hence it is urgent to de-bureaucratise everything that keeps humanitarian assistance projects from being realized. In this regard, you play a fundamental role, for we need true heroes capable of blazing trails, building bridges, opening channels concerned primarily with the faces of those who suffer. Initiatives of the international community must similarly be directed to this end.”
The Pope, who had visited the FAO in the past and is the first Pope to visit the UN World Food Programme headquarters in Rome, concluded by quoting the Gospel: “I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink”. These words embody one of the axioms of Christianity. Independent of creeds and convictions, they can serve as a golden rule for our peoples. A people plays out its future by its ability to respond to the hunger and thirst of its brothers and sisters. In that ability to come to the aid of the hungry and thirsty, we can measure the pulse of our humanity.” Humanity is “a people plays out its future by its ability to respond to the hunger and thirst of its brothers and sisters.” Allow yourselves “the luxury to dream”, the Pope said, “we need dreamers who can carry out this plan”.
Francis arrived at the WFP headquarters at 9 am and was welcomed by Executive Director Ertharin Cousin and the President of the assembly, Stephanie Hochstetter Skinner-Klée. He ended his visit just after 10.30 am, having pronounced an off-the-cuff speech to the WFP and thanking them for their hidden and behind-the-scenes work, which, just like a building’s foundations, allows the fight against world poverty to go on. The Pope then remembered the Memorial Wall at the entrance, standing in front of it as he came in and paying tribute to the sacrifice of members of the organisation around the world. Referring to them as “martyrs”, he said: “we remember them best by continuing to fight for the great goal of ‘zero hunger’”. Francis bid farewell with his usual request: “Thank you so much and please pray for me so that I too may do something to help combat hunger”. The WFP assembly is beginning its work in the run up to the fundamental “Sustainable Development Goals”. Each year, the WFP brings food assistance to an average of 80 million people in approximately 80 countries.
