FAO SUMMIT: SOLIDARITY, INSPIRING CRITERION FOR COOPERATION

VATICAN CITY, JUN 10, 2002 (VIS) - Made public today was a message by the Pope to the heads of State and government who are participating in the World Food Summit which is taking place from June 10 to 13 in Rome.

John Paul II recalls at the beginning of the message that at the previous summit in 1996, it was made clear that hunger and malnutrition are not only natural phenomena but also the result of a "more complex situation of underdevelopment."

"If the goals of the 1996 Summit have not been met, that can be attributed also to the absence of a culture of solidarity, and to international relations often shaped by a pragmatism devoid of ethical and moral foundations. Moreover, a cause for concern is to be found in the statistics according to which assistance given to poor countries in recent years appears to have decreased rather than increased."

The Holy Father affirms that "today more than ever there is an urgent need in international relationships for solidarity to become the criterion underlying all forms of cooperation, with the acknowledgment that the resources which God the Creator has entrusted to us are destined for all."

John Paul II expresses his joy that the present summit is pushing governments and governmental institutions toward a commitment to "guarantee the right to nutrition in cases where an individual State is unable to do so because of its own underdevelopment and poverty. Such a commitment can be seen as entirely necessary and legitimate, given the fact that poverty and hunger risk compromising even the ordered coexistence of peoples and nations, and constitute a real threat to peace and international security."

"Hence the importance of the present World Food Summit," he concludes, "with its reaffirmation of the concept of food security and its call for a mobilization of solidarity aimed at reducing by half, by the year 2015, the number of people in the world who are undernourished and deprived of the bare necessities of life. This is an enormous challenge, and one to which the Church too is fully committed."

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